Gracefulness must run in my family. My grandmother, my mother, me and my daughter make up four generations of graceful beings. Okay--I may be exaggerating a tad, maybe a little sarcastic, even. Let me explain. We'll start with the first generation.
Annette is my grandmother. You could say that she is the genetic source for our inherited gracefulness. My grandmother has a problem with sidewalks. The first incident occurred on a crisp late autumn day. My grandmother used to wear a cape-like coat...it had no armholes, so it resembled a cape. She was coming out of the doctor's office and my mother, my sister and I were waiting in the car for her. As she came out of the doctor's office, the cape caught the door, and my grandmother went down. When she hit the ground, she rolled and the cape proceeded to wrap itself around her and go over her head. So there, was my grandmother, wrapped up like a sausage laying on the sidewalk. Amazingly, all she managed to injure was her pinky finger, which she rolled on during the melee. The next incident occurred in March of 1987. Don't ask me why I remember this, but I do. My grandmother was driving my sister and I back to her house for a sleepover. She stopped at the AM/PM in Glastonbury for gas. She went in to pay for the gas and left me and my sister in the car. I remember wondering why it was taking so long for her to come out. Finally she came back to the car with her face all bloody. Apparently, when she was coming out of the store, the heel of her shoe wedged in a crack in the sidewalk, causing her to fall onto the pavement, face-first. This was very traumatic for both me and my sister, and we got to take our first ride in an ambulance. The sidewalk struck again. Later that same year, my grandmother was painting her bedroom. While doing this, she managed to fall off the ladder she was using, and break her leg. Not a banner year for my grandmother.
Next along in the genetic line is my mother, the second generation. My mother has been known to take several spills. All, thank goodness, have been more humorous than hurtful, and for some reason, I am present for most of the falls. Outsiders may think that I have it in for her, but really I seem to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In addition, even though my mother is short (only 4'10"), she has the uncanny ability to fall in slow motion. One time, she had an entire conversation with my sister as she was going down.
Mom: "Here I go..."
Tina: "Where are you going?"
Mom: "I'm going down."
Another time, my mother and I were outside in the snow fixing the bird feeders. Apparently, she managed to trip over a snow bank, and fall down. All I heard was "hmmpf". I turned around and saw my mother sitting in the snow. I asked her what she was doing down there, and she said she was resting.
Then there was the peanut incident. My sister and I had gotten bean bag chairs for Christmas and they were becoming deflated as the peanuts inside got more and more smushed. My aunt, for some reason, had a mess of Styrofoam peanuts that she put in two big garbage bags for us to refill our chairs. My mother carried these bags out to the car, but the bags were so big that they dragged on the ground. She managed to step on one of the bags, trip herself and land on the mountain of peanuts. If it wasn't for those peanuts, who knows the injuries she would have sustained. The peanuts saved her life.
My mother doesn't just have a problem with tripping and falling, but she also manages to brain herself every once in a while. Last year, she was walking in the dark out to the kitchen, tripped over a box and smashed head first into the refrigerator. Last night, she was putting stuff away in the freezer, when she dropped something on the floor. She bent down to pick it up, she was almost knocked out by a frozen chicken that toppled out of the freezer. Her head is still burning today. Maybe the fridge has it out for her, like the sidewalks do for my grandmother. We may never know...
I am the next generation. I have so many spills on my record that I will only describe the best ones here. I, like my mother and grandmother, am short, so one would think that my center of gravity would keep me well-balanced. That doesn't seem to apply to my situation. When I was eight, I was running into the backyard, slipped in a mud puddle, and slid down the hill, covering myself entirely in mud. That spill earned me the name "Geronimo." Later on that same year, I was riding my bike down suicide hill on Old Colchester Road, when I hit a pile of sand and flew over the handlebars. That was my first case of road rash. I've fallen out of trees, off decks, tripped up and down the stairs. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was carrying my sister's cat in her carrier up the stone steps in front of our house. The cat carrier caught one of the steps, I tripped and landed on top of the carrier. That stupid cat probably saved my daughter's life. I have slipped on the ice and gone under my car, twice. I fell down the hill at my house when my foot rolled on some acorns. When I was working as a waitress, I was climbing a shelf to reach something. My foot slipped and I fell into a five pound block of butter. I also managed one time to fall just right so that I wedged myself in-between the ice cream freezer and the wall. The list goes on and on. It is amazing after all of these incidents, I've only managed to break my big toe...and that wasn't even my fault! My sister was helping me do a headstand and she let go of my feet. I toppled over and my toe smashed into the concrete floor of our basement. (T--you knew I would blame at least one incident on you...)
My daughter is the fourth generation. She is twelve, but already the gracefulness genes are apparent. She is the only kid I know that can trip over her own shadow. When she was little, she liked to watch her feet walk. When she walked through parking lots, she sometimes would smash into the side view mirrors of parked cars. One time, at West Farms, she walked into a No Parking sign. It seems whenever my back is turned, I will hear a commotion behind me, I turn around, and my daughter is laying on the floor, clutching one body part or another. No broken bones yet, we're hoping it will stay that way.
Gracefulness runs in our family and for some reason only effects the female population. Some incidents have been more serious than others, but we always have a good laugh at each other's expenses. Hopefully, my granddaughters will not be plagued by our gracefulness genes. Maybe we can evolve so that those genes can be rendered useless. All we have to do is beware of capes, sidewalks, refrigerators, frozen chickens, acorns, shadows, Styrofoam peanuts, cat carriers, butter and parking signs.
No comments:
Post a Comment