Tales From the Burning Prairie

There are no stairs in my house, this is by design. Not that we designed a house with no stairs, but we ruled out houses that had more than a single level. Even a couple of steps can lead to trouble, you see, I am a faller. I fall with great frequency and panache. If falling was an Olympic event, I’d win the gold medal.

You could call it many things: clumsiness, lack of coordination, accident-prone, two left feet, fumble-fingered, all thumbs. But I prefer to call myself gracefulness-challenged. I was diagnosed early, at about the second time I fell and split my head open. I don’t remember them, but apparently I fell in ways that no one ever had before and that would be impossible to recreate in the future. I like to think of it as style.

My parents and teachers tried their best to help me. Mom and Dad got me a big chalkboard so I could practice holding chalk and drawing circles without injuring myself and others. Dad built a balance beam in the backyard so I could learn to put one foot in front of the other instead of getting them tangled up all the time. At school, I was enrolled in something called “High Challenge”, which was like remedial walking. They tried their best, really they did, bless their hearts. But all their efforts were for nothing, I remain an accident waiting to happen.

To catalog all my many falls would be impossible, or at least unbelievable, but here are some highlights. Childhood-fell out of tree (broken arm), fell out of bunk bed (broken collar bone). Adulthood-falling down stairs at apartment (twisted ankle), falling down stairs of next apartment (more embarrassed than anything, as our downstairs neighbor, Underpants Man, opened his door just as I reached the bottom), falling backward down front steps of next apartment (nearly die of humiliation when horrified neighbors rush to help me).

The next apartment seemed to usher in a time of relative peace. I began to believe that maybe, just maybe, I was growing out of that phase. Some minor things cropped up, like the time I slammed my thumb in the vault door at the bank or the time my left hand swelled up like a puffer fish and my wedding ring had to be cut off in the E.R. But I wasn’t falling anymore. I shouldn’t have gotten smug.

The next several years passed quietly as we brought our first baby into our family and prepared for our second one. Then, the falling started again. While hugely pregnant with our second, I fell off the single step in our house (the one in the garage by the washing machine) and out of my shoes. I managed to break the fall, the baby never felt a thing, but I ripped a ligament in my foot.

Then potty training for the oldest began and I found myself sprinting to public restrooms, toddler in tow. One such time in the grocery store, Mr. I-need-to-go-to-the-potty-RIGHT-NOW! decided he wasn’t going to be doing any of that walking nonsense and wrapped himself around my legs. I didn’t even have time to yell “timber!” before I was felled. I tried to grab him to break his fall and forgot about breaking my own. That was O.K., the right side of my body and head broke my fall (bursitis, lower back pain, fierce headache, and bent glasses). I spent six weeks in physical therapy. About two weeks after that, Mr. I-don’t-want-to-walk-to-the-potty! pulled the same stunt again! This time I remembered to break my fall with my hands and not my head. But my right hip is not my friend anymore, and my lower back is mad at me.

My most recent feat of unrivaled gracelessness was painfully public as well as just painful. I walk my oldest to Pre-K every day, pushing the youngest in her stroller. The school is on a small hill, there is no ramp and I haul the stroller up the stairs, backwards. If you think this sounds like a recipe for disaster, you’d be right. One day, after hauling the stroller up the stairs, I tried to turn it around to roll it forward. And stepped off the walk and almost tumbled right down the hill. I broke the fall this time with my right knee and would’ve wailed with the pain but dozens of other parents and children had witnessed my shame. Well, I managed to get the oldest into class and limp my way home with the youngest in the stroller who, to judge by her giggling, was having the time of her life. So now my knee is not too happy with me, either.

My poor husband, he has been the primary witness for most of my mishaps; and he has to wonder what kind of klutz he married. He’s seen so many of these humiliating incidents, but they still alarm him, far more than me. When I fell in the garage he made me throw away the shoes I fell off of, but it didn’t help. You see, I know the truth, it’s not the shoes, it’s the little traitors stuffed into them. My feet, I think they’re cursed. Not that I believe in curses or anything.

Addendum: My two-year old daughter has just won the gold medal in Olympic Falling. Friday afternoon, Pumpkin (who has an in-toeing problem) tripped over her own foot, struck Monkey’s chair with her head, and had to get three stitches. She is fine and healing nicely; my nerves are shot.