A is for Awesome

According to one of my directors at work, I need to marry rich so I'll have someone to take care of me. The initial sting of the words (I'll make my own money, thank you) was soon abated as she explained further. "...you know, someone with the kind of money to pay for a person to follow you around and make sure you don't get hurt. And then help you when you do."

Such is the sorry state of my life. I resisted posting about my endless string of mishaps because it seemed uninteresting, but mostly it's just sad. And then today, while stifling a scream in the cafeteria after getting my middle finger jammed in the swinging door of the garbage bin, I decided that maybe the time has come to openly discuss my foibles.

I should warn you: I am down to seven good typing fingers. Obviously, the middle finger is out of rotation (the only obscenities it can currently express are strictly digital in nature). My right ring finger tried to catch a basketball over the weekend, jammed up, and now looks like zombie skin. Luckily, I was at my brother's lacrosse game, surrounded by my many athletically-gifted siblings, so there was plenty of opportunity for ridicule as I squirmed and tried to swallow the stream of curses not fit for my six-year-old brothers' ears. And finally, I slammed my thumb in the door during a routine middle-of-the-night bathroom break. This particular injury caused me to feel sick, walk to the kitchen, and later wake up on the floor surrounded by three smashed glasses and water. My first faint. I should scrapbook it.

Pathetic, I know. And all of these happened within the past three weeks. If I had the time or dexterity I could create a working excel spreadsheet- organized into levels of severity, sobriety and cost of repair... (although a simple graph would show that the level of sobriety often informed the results.)

I have sprained an elbow trying to get rid of hiccups. I have discovered and removed a two-inch thorn from my leg. I have had someones leg karate chop my arm while flying off of a tube going 30 mph. I have broken my foot by slipping on a softball the day before a trip to Europe. I have broken that same foot again, this time trying to slam dunk a pizza into a garbage can. I have cut through the top quarter of my finger while slicing lemons- a pain I assure you I will never forget. I have bumped into more doors, tripped down (and up) more stairs, and fallen more times than a blind, drunk socialite.

And yet I always secretly thought this made me a tiny bit lucky.

You see, when you live in a body that is not fully aware of itself, your options and abilities become more clear. While my high school peers were considering careers as doctors, lawyers and professional athletes, I was able to weed those popular occupations out based on the inevitable results: scalpel cuts; paper cuts; yeahfuckingright. Instead, I was forced to look elsewhere for vocational inspiration, which is how I pinpointed Literacy as my lifetime ally.

Books can't hurt you (although last week one did fall from a high shelf and sliced my leg), and writing is just plain fun. You can sit in your own safe, padded little area and write about the scary, sharp-edged world. You can be funny, hysterical, whimsical and risky. You can imagine yourself as someone who can race down the street without twisting an ankle or as an astronaut whose tether wouldn't accidentally snap during a space walk. You can find a sense of humor in the fact that you have spent 25 years as an unwilling, unknowing (and certainly unpaid) participant in a Murphy's law case study. You can write absolutely anything about absolutely anything you want.

And best of all, you can do it with only seven good fingers.