accident prone

On a normal day, at least one or more of my children trips and falls before 8am. Sometimes they literally fall out of their chairs while eating breakfast. (I’m still not sure how this physically happens, but it does.) We must go through band-aids, Neosporin, and ice packs twelve times more than the average family. 

There are always tears. Sometimes I’m the one crying because we literally can’t get out of the door without a child tripping over the door frame and almost falling into the bushes. In what can only be described as a terrible way to wake up, one of the kids almost always gets smacked in the face by the car door because their sibling wasn’t paying attention when they flung it open.  

Inevitably, I find myself yelling, “Pay attention when you open the door!” every morning. In case you’re curious, my sage advice doesn’t help. The door flinging still happens and I just have to shake my head and soothe the injured one’s bruised ego and face pain.

Sometimes I feel like we are unintentionally reenacting the Three Stooges. The oldest spills her drink. She walks away to get something to clean it up. The middle child walks through without hearing me say, “Don’t step THERE!” just as he steps “THERE.” He slips on the spilled drink and starts crying. The youngest comes in and not paying attention to anything and doesn’t see the wet spot or his older brother and trips on everyone. I start yelling at everyone and then we’re all crying. 

This may all seem far-fetched to those that have graceful and elegant children. Seriously, though, this Level 5 clumsiness is my daily reality. There are some days when it feels like I am all out of sympathy and it isn’t even lunchtime.

Thankfully none of the injuries have ended in stitches or broken bones (yet), but they are still young. For this very reason, I have a mental listing of the local urgent cares in our area.

Despite my frustrations with their ability to be exceptionally accident prone, I am not surprised. They come by it completely naturally. 

They have a mom that in her twenties would go running and accidentally kick her ankles with her opposite foot as she was running. By the end of the run, both ankles were always cut and bloodied. That’s quite a goofy stride. 

My high school Biology teacher called me “Grace” because one time I leaned over in my desk to ask someone a question and my desk fell on its side with me in it. I was stuck in my desk with my drill team uniform on and legs up in the air. Thankfully I had bloomers on. The nickname carried on throughout the rest of that school year. 

In college, I had to fulfill an art credit so I chose Printmaking as an “easy” class. One day we were carving into wood pieces to make a custom print in the wood. Right after the professor explained how to do it carefully and after I rolled my eyes thinking “duh, this isn’t that hard,” I accidentally slid the wood carving tool into my thumb instead of the wood. For the next three hours of that class, I sat with my throbbing thumb wrapped in cheap bathroom paper towels. I never rolled my eyes at him again. 

I spend most of my adult days covered in bruises of unknown origin. It’s usually not an exciting story- most of the time I just misjudge where my body is in relation to another object and then somehow ram my leg/side into said object. 

So, yes, my kids are accident prone. Clumsy if you will.  And they got it from an obvious dominant gene.

But, if they are anything like me, when they grow up they’ll have the ability to laugh at themselves, have empathy for others who are just like them, and they’ll have a little humility to boot.

So maybe being accident prone isn’t all that bad. As long as we can avoid stitches and broken bones…

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here