Comments are closed.
My Dad calls me Grace.
May 26th, 2009
Age Five: Riding my Rainbow Bright Bicycle with training wheels. My Mom follows me on her bike with my baby brother in one of those plastic seats attached. No one is wearing a helmet, people didn’t wear helmets in 1985. A car coming quickly. A cry from behind, “Get closer to the curb!” I get a little TOO close, my skull meets a concrete ditch.
Age Ten: My dad warns me not to climb the massive fallen tree we come upon while hiking. I do it anyway. A huge rotted limb breaks, a girl falls, an ankle sprains.
Age Fourteen: I can ride a horse, very well. I mount a cranky old pony I’ve never ridden before at the stable of a friend. Pony bucks, too embarrassed to be bucked off by a pony– I hang on. Pony sits down and rolls. Left leg squished between leather saddle, obese equine flesh and hard Georgia clay.
Age Seventeen: I’m a drama geek. Whilst helping paint sets for “You Can’t Take it with You”, I open a can of claret paint with the nearest available implement. It turns out a chisel is not a wise choice. I, of course, slipped and a gash ensued. When I showed my drama teacher my gushing hand she replied, “Wash the paint off your hand and get back to work!”. She had seen too many students with a flair for the dramatic, but you can’t fake arterial bloodletting.
Age Eighteen: Cute shoes with stacked heels, a heavy backpack loaded with core texts, steep concrete stairs, and a late freshman are a recipe for a lovely scar right between my eyes. The new resident at the hospital slipped with the skin glue and sealed my eyelid shut. The eyelashes were missed.
Age Twenty-Nine: While showing The Son the proper way to hand feed livestock (arms outstretched, palms up) I was headbutted by a cantankerous, extremely rotund goat. My wrist was twisted between his furry cranium and a plank fence. Tomorrow, another doctor.
My darling husband typed this post for me as I sat with a bag of frozen brussell sprouts (we always use brussel sprouts for this, we should really try cooking them sometime.) controlling the swelling on my arm. Thanks Darling.
Filed under Boy is my face red, lexapro lexplains it, stupidity | Comments (4)4 Responses to “My Dad calls me Grace.”
Funny. My grandma calls me Grace. I wonder why…:-)
I’m seriously surprised that we aren’t related…really!
I thought I was the one most prone to accidents…apparently you’ll give me a run for my money.
Age 1: Dad isn’t the most mechanically inclined. He thought he put the highchair tray on correctly…turns out, not so much. ShoeShe falls from highchair and lands on head. That explains a lot!
Age 4: Preschool girl with a knack for exploration should not wear a dress to school. She gets stung by a bee on the butt. Teacher addresses the wound. Kid is miraculously healed. She goes out to seek revenge on her bee-F-F. Instead, she is stung again right next to the first sting. Teacher addresses the second wound and tells kid to stay inside and play.
Age 8: ShoeShe goes to camp. This should be scary in and of itself. ShoeShe proceeds to sleep on top bunk of bunk beds right next to the door to the room. ShoeShe finds that when sitting on her top bunk, she can prop her feet up on the open door. ShoeShe also finds that when the ultra-cool teenage camp counselor comes in the room and shuts the door rather quickly, ShoeShe is thrown off top bunk into the floor. ShoeShe breaks her “thumb toe,” three fingers (which were protecting her nose) and sprains an ankle. ShoeShe stays at camp, but moves to a bottom bunk.
Age 12: ShoeShe is minding her own business in class (probably not…she’s probably talking to the girl next to her) when the teacher leaves the room to talk to another teacher in the hall. Craziness ensues. Three girls decide they need to knock over “Richard.” “Richard” was the biggest boy in our class. He was destined for greatness on the football field (he was pretty good on the high school team). We had those old heavy one-piece metal desks back then. I was just about to get up to go sharpen my pencil (or more likely go talk to someone else) when lo and behold “Richard” and all his stockiness was toppled over desk and all by the three idiotic girls (I think they had a crush on him or something). “Richard” and his desk karate chopped my leg. An unsuspecting ShoeShe breaks her leg while sitting in class.
Age 15: ShoeShe probably shouldn’t have ever played organized sports given her inherent ability to get hurt. Nevertheless, she played many organized sports. On one such outing she was playing basketball at a notoriously rough almost-inner-city junior high school. ShoeShe’s coach yells her name to call a play (ShoeShe has always been short, and as such was the point guard) on our next possession. A girl from the other team had the ball, saw me turn my head, and then threw the ball as hard as she could at my face, hitting my right jaw area. I’ve had TMJ issues ever since that day. I’ve had surgeries, splints, physical therapy and more!!!
Age 15: ShoeShe is snow skiing on spring break in Colorado. She is heading down a green slope from lunch (she had already tackled some blues and a black successfully, so the green was cake) when out of nowhere a guy coming off a double black slope flies into ShoeShe knocking her unconscious. Seriously. ShoeShe was carried down the slope in a body bag (one of the coolest experiences of my life…NOT) with head/neck/leg/arm…body immobilizers in place. The folks at the ski hospital kept ShoeShe immobilized for over 3 hours while they did x-rays, MRIs, CT scans and more. ShoeShe thought she had broken her neck or possibly worse, because she couldn’t move things. ShoeShe was also going in and out of consciousness…probably because she saw the bloody ninja skier who hit her (he wound up paralyzed from the waist down…and he lost eight teeth). ShoeShe’s only injury to speak of was a bruise the size of a developing nation on her right leg (though the doctor said it would have been less painful if I had just broken the leg). The bruise still surfaces when it is really cold outside. The 20-hour bus ride home was NOT fun, but at least I did the damage on our last day of skiing.
Age 18: ShoeShe should have given up sports after the basketball injury, but she didn’t. She did, however, switch to soccer. ShoeShe is warming up for a state tournament game, when her “assistant coach” (who had no business on the soccer field) begins throwing soccer balls and weighted soccer balls as hard as she can at ShoeShe (did I mention that I was a goalie?). ShoeShe is doing quite well, deflecting every ball when the “coach” moves up. She is now about five feet away from her target (ShoeShe). She hurls more balls as hard as she can. A weighted ball came flying at ShoeShe. ShoeShe reached out to catch it and heard the strangest ripping sound coming from her shoulder…yep…another rotator cuff injury for ShoeShe (it’s like the third one)…yay…more physical therapy and shots ensue.
Age 25: ShoeShe is driving back from home from a family visit when she blows a tire, losing control of her cute, somewhat new, blue car. ShoeShe (and the car) flip six times while continuing to move forward (spiraling like a football I’m told). ShoeShe breaks both hands from her tight grip of the steering wheel, but is otherwise unharmed. Car…harmed…totaled…as in there must be something great in ShoeShe’s future, because nobody should have lived through that wreck.
AND – to top it all off, there’s been loads of broken fingers, toes, crazy bruises, twisted/stretched/strained/sprained stuff, messed up tendons/muscles/ligaments and way more!!! Maybe I should live in a bubble.
Good luck with the healing soul sister! I’ll see you Friday!
Oh…and numerous people call me Grace, not sure where they get that?!?
Sorry for taking over your blog.
Oh, and I’m now super-jealous of your Rainbow Brite bike…mine was Cabbage Patch Kids (a bit creepy, but purple…so I was happy-ish).