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I’m one of those fortunate people who never get sick. I guess I shouldn’t say “never” because of course I have gotten sick but it’s so rare I can’t remember the last time I caught a cold or the flu or any other bug that goes around.
That said, though I do not get sick very often I do injure myself on a regular basis. I’m puzzled by it because I’ve always been good at skating, riding bikes, running, skiing, bowling, basketball (I was in my teens so it may not count here), gardening, home maintenance, swimming, climbing (never once fell out of a tree, my favorite childhood activity), hiking, and a variety of other physical activities, many of which I still enjoy today. I have a treadmill I’ve used for years and have never fallen off. I’ve never fallen off a ladder and I use a ladder on a weekly basis. I do all my own home repairs, except electricity and things I can’t lift, and though I’ve ended up with scrapes and scratches, I’ve never received a serious injury using tools or my trusty ladder. I usually get hurt doing the most mundane things. Like standing up. And I’m not alone in the sisterhood of injuries.
I have a theory. Women multi-task. Women have been multi-tasking since the beginning of time. Before the term “multi-tasking” existed. It’s not that we do more than men, though there are countless hilarious Internet jokes with that theme. I believe it’s just that we go about life differently than men. It’s the way we process information as we perform tasks. And then we fall. Many men I’ve studied (and I have studied them) seem to do one task at a time then move on to other tasks. I can’t imagine that.
I’m an only child, and a girl, and my dad taught me how things work and actually encouraged me to repair things and build things and make things better and to figure out how things work. I think that early education is why I’ve always had a natural attraction to the computer. My dad would have gone nuts over computers, but he passed away in 1964. I have repaired a broken VCR, sliding glass door (it was a bit heavy and scary at a point but I did fix it), toilets, sinks, flooring (installed two floors, plumbed and pretty), wainscoting in an entry hall, house painting inside and out (lots of ladder work), made a set of ten screens from scratch to fit windows that were an odd size and I didn’t want to spend the money on special orders, a table extension with hinges, and the list goes on. If I want or need something I try to figure out a way to create it myself and save a little money and I can usually come up with something. I once installed a mirrored tiled wall in a dining room and had to cut tiles all around the border. I did cut my finger but considering all the glass tile cuts I had to make I was stunned I still had fingers at the end of the project.
The reason for that lengthy explanation is because I fall down and hurt myself constantly and rarely injure myself working on the above-referenced semi-dangerous tasks with tools and ladders. I worked in a legal office for many years and many “trip and fall” cases came to us. All the cases were women, all ages and sizes. Most were wearing sneakers and just walking. This has happened to me many times. In fact, I fell twice at work in the same spot and the maintenance man, who was a dear person and felt terrible, actually used some giant machine to roughen the walkway in that area. Both falls were bad. I was wearing flat shoes in both cases. I once broke my arm after falling down in a parking lot. Tripped in a pothole. There were dozens of people in the parking lot but I found the pothole. Though I do fall down a lot that is the only time I broke anything falling down. I did break a few toes when I walked into a steam radiator in an apartment and I recently broke more toes making my bed. The bed frame attacked me without provocation.
Once a young man broke my ankle for me. I was on vacation in Costa Rica. He didn’t mean to but as I sat down with a tray of food he moved the picnic table for me so I could sit on the bench then he pushed it back in place, vigorously, into my ankle. I could hear the “crack.” I wasn’t even moving. That doesn’t count; right? I was in a car crash when I was young and broke my nose then many years later my cousin hit me in the nose with a ping-pong paddle. I was a spectator. That actually turned out to be to my benefit. When I broke my nose the first time it slanted to the left for years. My cousin “fixed” it and after the swelling went down it was straight. And he didn’t charge me a dime for the procedure!
I have fallen down a number of times dog-walking. Usually it’s because of the dogs’ frisky behavior (seeing another dog or a bird) but often I just misstep on the uneven ground or sidewalk. Gravel is a good medium for a fall and when dog walking at a brisk pace a patch of gravel can pull me down. I had a car once that was difficult to get into and I constantly banged my head getting in or out of the car no matter how carefully I tried to avoid it. My son later had this car when he went away to college and when we went somewhere in this car I banged my head--again. Did I not have ANY memory of how to enter and exit this car?
I’ve never banged my head on any other car. I’ve banged my head on cupboards in various homes over the years. I’ve fallen down stairs (but never a ladder). I once carried a basket of laundry into my garage and missed the first of two steps and the basket and I sailed into the car. Attempting to do one’s laundry is in the mundane category. Each time I have an “incident” I’m usually out of commission for quite some time. I had a bone density test and was told I had great bone density. It’s a good thing.
And the leaf doesn’t fall too far from the tree. My daughter broke her wrist on Christmas Eve one year skating with the neighborhood kids. When she was about 13 she broke her arm, the same arm, riding her bike. Years ago when she was about 11 we stopped at a grocery store featuring “cookie cards.” Each time we visited the store the kids would get a free cookie upon presentation of their cookie card.
We had completed our shopping and forgot the cookie so I pulled in front of the store in the “no parking zone” and she went in with her card to get her cookie. She came out seconds later with a giant smile and her cookie and as she got to within five feet of the passenger side of the car she disappeared before my eyes. I was stunned. It was as though Scottie had beamed her up. She literally disappeared from sight. Seconds later she reappeared. She was sort of crying and sort of laughing. I got out to see what happened and there wasn’t a single thing on the ground that we could see that would have caused the fall. She was a swimmer, a gymnast, and a soccer player. Very agile and coordinated. She was wearing sneakers at the time of the cookie incident. She was moving briskly but certainly not running and in fact had slowed down because she was almost at the car. She did not break anything. The cookie was not so lucky.
My mother fell down a few years ago and broke her shoulder. She was simply leaving her house and fell down a small step. She was in agony and out of commission for a long time. Years ago while participating in a scavenger hunt in a vineyard with friends, she fell down a small hill. When I was young I fell down a hill in almost the same location. I also fell off a cliff at Santa Cruz. Needed surgery for that one. I wore spike heels for years and years walking all over San Francisco and went out dancing at night and never once fell. At Santa Cruz I was wearing sneakers.
My grandmother fell out of a three-story building once and broke almost every bone in her body. She was simply doing what she and countless others did routinely: hanging laundry on a line that stretched between two buildings. The pulley stuck, she pulled, it pulled back, and down she went. She also fell off chairs many times. One year she fell off a chair on Thanksgiving. She was out of commission for over a year. Because of her falls off chairs I have never stood on a chair to get items from cupboards. For most of my childhood she begged me never to stand on a chair. (She did not know about my devotion to tree climbing.) Instead I have several stools of various sizes and ladders and I have never fallen from a stool or ladder. (I’m repeating the ladder history because it amazes me.) I have a feeling that if I ever stand on a chair I’ll fall down. Self-fulfilling prophecies are a bitch.
My other leaf, my son, once fell while attempting to enter a car and broke his ankle. There were extenuating circumstances but it’s always amazed me he broke his ankle by simply trying to enter a car. He rides bikes, walks great distances, runs, goes to a gym, etc. He also had a nasty bike incident as a child. Riding home with two friends they encountered a pile of rocks a homeowner had placed in the curb area for a yard project. My son ran into it and took a header. Broken clavicle and assorted nasty scratches and bruises. He also broke his foot playing volleyball in his late teens. But those are youth accidents and they don’t count. Kids are supposed to injure themselves in childhood. It’s supposedly how we learn to not injure ourselves as adults. Faulty concept.
A couple of office friends and I decided to go to lunch one day and one of them fell down hard and had to be taken to the emergency room. She was wearing sensible shoes, and there was nothing we could find on the sidewalk that would cause such a nasty fall. We were walking. Actually, we were strolling.
Many of us tripped on the stairs outside that office. Some of us received significant injuries. Another friend not too long ago fell down and was badly hurt. She was in her own house. I believe she tripped over her dog. Last year I went to the grocery store in the rain. I was wearing Crock shoes designed to be worn in wet weather. The store had placed a small mat inside next to the entrance but it was inadequate and was full of water. I saw it and knew instantly that I had to be super careful. I carefully looked down and tried to maneuver through the wet puddles. I remember thinking, “Thank God I’m wearing these shoes,” but down I went.
A small crowd formed around me. People in these instances always start demanding information from the downed person. That person is the last person in the world to answer such questions. I had no idea what happened. Didn’t they see me fall down? They had much more information than I did. As I was catching my breath we all heard a terrible crash. I rolled over to look and a poor woman had fallen just like I did but she had crashed into a large food display of boxes and cans. Her shirt was up over her head and she was bleeding profusely from her ribcage. I was immediately abandoned and was therefore able to slink away. I took the damn shoes off and did my shopping in my socks and came home.
At another store in my mom’s town I reached down to remove something from the bottom of my shopping cart and as I brought my arm up I received a gash in my arm from my wrist to halfway up my arm. The manager came over and gave me a Band-Aid. I’ve gone back to that store and each cashier lane has the same protrusion. It’s to prevent shopping carts from banging into the counter but it’s sharp metal. This is usually covered with rubber or an entirely different design in other stores. I’m always on the alert now.
I have a very long list of these occurrences. For some falls and injuries, in my case, I believe it’s because I’m always going a mile a minute. Everything I do I do fast because I’m so anxious to get on to the next task. But not always. Recently, which is why I wrote this pathetic blog, I fell at my mom’s house. We had spent a pleasant day together, had a nice lunch, visited with the dogs (I always bring my dogs) then it was time for me to go home. I put the dogs in the car and was simply walking around the back of the car, not running, and I fell down hard. My face broke my fall. Not a pretty sight. I was wearing WALKING SHOES. Mom and I both believe I slipped on wet leaves behind the car. Possible. I hurt my left ankle, my right knee, my right shoulder, my right hand, and my right eye and right cheek. My glasses dug into the eyebrow cutting my head (so much blood) and it took a while for me to stand up and deal with it all.
That was just about three weeks ago. I developed a fantastic black eye with a very large bump on my cheekbone. The bruising on the cheekbone was a different color. Now it’s green. I think green is good. My eye is still black and blue or actually sort of burgundy now and my right hand is still somewhat out of commission. I can use my fingers but can’t lift a coffee cup. My optometrist thinks my glasses are goners and tried to fix them but eventually gave up. I have small tools and fixed them myself. Dad would be proud. Grammy not so much.
The greatest mystery of my life is: I never fell out of a tree. There’s competition in the world of tree climbing. Who dares to go to the top or who goes the highest wins. It was always me and I never fell. Walnut trees are my favorite climbing trees. The older the better. I don’t get it. I can climb a tree without falling but I can’t walk on flat ground in walking shoes without falling. [Sorry about the tree thing, mom. I think you knew. If not, you do now.]
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