Trippin'

Anyone who knows me slightly well has seen me trip, run into a wall or hurt myself with nothing but thin air and my own body parts. Want some embarrassing evidence? Here are a couple of my literally hundreds of stories that won't shame my parents:

Exhibit A: When I was about twelve my mom was chasing me around the house playing tag (I inherited my love for wrestling and playing games as an adult meant for small children that don't break bones when they fall). I tripped on the area rug in the living room, diving straight into a stucco column. I remember seeing tar black and pretty sparkles similar to what Nicole Kidman must see when she opens her limo door at a movie opening. When I gained consciousness a few seconds later my mom was screaming. She says that my forehead was concaved, then it popped back out. Today, I have a dent in my forehead you can especially see when I am frustrated or sad.

Exhibit B: About the same year as Exhibit A, I dove into the pool that I swam in every day since I was in the swim team--star swimmer ironically. I still remember my inspiration for this dumb move: I wanted to dive into the nine foot pool gracefully like the Olympic divers. So, I dove straight down. STRAIGHT DOWN. With my eyes closed. Thank goodness I knew how to dive because I did curve up where I approximated the pool floor was. I underestimated the depth, however, and scraped my face on the bottom of the pool. For a month that summer, a red stripe traced from my forehead down my nose to the bottom of my chin, dividing my face symmetrically. I looked like a red and white Budweiser race car.

Exhibit C: I'm actually a bit proud of this one. In college, my friends and I went to CiCi's Pizza, a popular pizza place at 3am after the clubs and bars closed in Tallahassee since it was all-you-can-eat pizza and fountain drinks for $3.99. With ten slices of pizza and a cup of coke on my tray, I began walking over to our table after I had filled my drink, not noticing the puddle on the floor in front of the soda fountain. I slipped, heels up, back flat on the floor (mind, I was wearing a short skirt), but somehow I managed to keep my tray, with an open cup of soda and pizza, aloft. I screamed out, "Yeah!" proud that I didn't spill my food all over my chest and stomach. The pizza place cheered for me, though probably more because the guys could see up my skirt.

Exhibit D: Today. I was teaching a class of second graders Christmas vocabulary. Walking backwards down the aisle of desks, my foot stepped inside of a loop formed by a student's bag handle hanging from the side of his desk. I fell back on my butt in front of the entire class. My foot was wrapped so tightly in the fall, that I actually pulled the boys desk with my two feet as I fell. The boy just sat there in his chair while his desk was dragged out by the big, tall foreigner dropping like a Sycamore tree. I started laughing, so all thirty-two students and one Japanese teacher (who luckily I am friends with) laughed hysterically while I rubbed my butt, whining "Itai" (Japanese for "Ow!").