When you are an odd bird, everyone
asks you why you are odd. Few want to know why you are a bird. -Svetlin
Petkov
I am a Phoebe, betimes. You know, Phoebe of Friends? The most endearing qualities are Phoebe; naiveté, clumsiness, impulsive, quirky,
dramatic, petty, insecure, secure, instinctual, positive, edgy, impossible,
gentle, sweet, tender. It is all there
and, yes, endearing because clumsy people relate to her.
I can drop anything liquid on a newly mopped
floor. I can drop spoons, and dogs (
yes, dogs), and glasses, and cups, and paint, and brushes full of paint, and
groceries, and thoughts, in a mad minute.
I can trip and/or fall over a toothpick. I can do triple-gainers (ask my
students). I can see something in my
peripheral vision and trip over it anyways.
I bump into things and people (yes, strangers on a sidewalk). I can trip over nothing and look to see what
caused it and find nothing.
I can want to do something exciting and thrilling
and physical and my logic remembers and I give up trying; like if a bridge is ever going to fall, I
will be on it; like if I went to an
underwater glass bubble, it would pop as soon as I get there. I know my limitations, usually. I saved my
baby by rolling onto my back, but wrenched my back sliding down thirteen steps
of ice.
I can trip upstairs as well as down. I have some funny stories about having a
broken foot and was on crutches and trying to get groceries without a
cart. Most people would know about
centrifugal force of a plastic bag full of milk and crutches. I was grateful when I got my little kids out
of those splay-legged highchairs. Yes,
death trap that was. I still am wary of
sitting down the line on a line of chairs at an event. Yes, my father said I always had to learn
from my own mistakes.
Something new has cropped up lately. I can take a lid off something and it
disappears into the ether. I know what I
am looking for. I stay where I am
looking and look and look and look, then remember, I took the lid off in the
other room. Please don't let it he
all-timers and let it only be half-timers.
I do not just peel carrots or potatoes or a label
off a bottle that the dishwasher decided not to loosen for a change. There is not one day that I do not carry
slash wounds on my fingers, or my thumb.
My meals include iron.
Eating in public is risky. I will either choke half to death on
something, it will contain soy and I walk out half bent-over, or I will talk
and out comes something from some tooth cavern...typically right in front of
everyone to see. I cannot travel with
coffee. I and the console wear it every
time.
Not a day goes by where I am not saying sorry to
people, places, or things. I am a ever
sorry person. Friends know not to walk
to close to me because I am a walking bruise.
I can bump heads, bump elbows, faster than you can say
"whoa".
And, for the last decade, gravity has not been my
friend. I was breaking the speed of
sound when I started falling off the huge rocks in my rock garden, in Maine,
and hit the side of the house with a bang hard enough to move dishes. I am an easy bleeder.
And I have been trapped in one leg of my pants and
unable to not land on the bed, grateful for the mattress. My spanks are a noose and it can take me an
hour to try to unravel the roll it became after it got off my shoulders. And, yes, I have punched myself in the face
many times.
With a 50/50 chance, I will push a door that has to
be pulled. I will get the one toilet
that does not flush. My heel will get
caught in a rotating door or walkway. I
have dents in the top of my head from every cupboard I have ever lived
with. I even have a bolt mark in the
middle of my forehead, like a third eye, since fate decided I need an extra
one. Yes, I was probably dropped on my
head when I was born.
I can laugh at my foibles; others? Not so much.
But I am worth a laugh or two for sure.
Sometimes we just need to see the humor in our clumsiness. Sometimes we just need to be tender with
ourselves instead of making ourselves tender.
And for those who I embarrass, who I am dangerous around? Marilyn Monroe said it best: "But if you
can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my
best.”
Sometimes we just need joyful tenderness for how
clumsy we can be. It sometimes makes us
delightful.
©Carol Desjarlais 11.20.19
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