Confessions of a Klutz

Let me start out with first saying sorry for the absence. I know I said I would try to do at least one blog post a week but sadly life has gotten in the way. Anyways what better way to get the ball rolling again then to talk about the anthropology behind my klutziness! Yes, you heard me correctly.

Now for those of you who know me already know that I am a born klutz. Honestly it makes no sense to me. I come from a long line of athletic Irish and Norwegian men and woman and even though I am athletic myself I am extremely klutzy. So why is this? Well like everything I decided to think of it from an anthropological perspective. First I decided to think about the genetic aspect. Like I said before I’m both Irish and Norwegian and come from a line of strong and athletic men and woman. I myself have always been athletic as well. Give me a softball or volleyball and I can do great things. Ask me to do a simple task like walking across the apartment without hitting my foot on the coffee table and I fail.

I mean just in the course of these past few hours I’ve managed to clunk my knee on two different parts of my desk, run into a doorknob and somehow shut my hair in the fridge (yes even I was impressed by the last one). What makes it even worse is that because of my ethnicity I’m incredibly pale so every little bruise shows up.

So once again I ask how did this happen to me? Well I decided to look at my parents. My mom is very coordinated but like me, bruises easily and always seems to have them from barely touching things. My dad cannot eat anything without spilling it all over whatever he is wearing. So if you put the two of them together I guess you get me.

Then we come to the idea of nature vs. nurture. Nature gave me apparently my ability to spill things all over myself (mostly things that stain clothes to the point of having to be discarded) and my paleness. Nurture gave me my ability to run into things and hurt myself on things that shouldn’t be able to hurt me. My mom blames it on the way I rush around to do everything. This comes from the society we live in, especially me who all my life has lived in the DC area where everything is rush, rush, rush, no time to sit down and relax.

Honestly even though I can see how all of these reasons make sense, I think I’m just the oddball in my family who can’t go anywhere without finding weird ways to injure myself. For those of you who don’t know me, here are some things in just the past few months (in no particular order) that I’ve done to myself:

-        Got my hair caught in a shredder

-        Got my scarf caught in a shredder (yes there is a trend here)

-        Ran into a wall

-        Fell and bashed my chin on my boyfriend’s head

-        Ran into countless desks and doorknobs (I swear they have it out for me)

-        Fell down a set of stairs near my office

-        Fell face first running to first base at a softball game

-        Stepped off a curb wrong and sprained my ankle

-        Got hit by a car in the parking lot (yes someone actually hit MY BODY even if it was barely a tap)

-        Got attacked by two birds outside of my office building after being locked out

-        Got a hole in my Panera coffee cup and spilled coffee all over myself and the car

And those of course are just the ones that I remember off the top of my head. A lot of times I tweet about the weird things that I end up doing to myself so follow me @curtincall89 for more laughing at my expense. My klutziness is something that will most likely stay with me for the rest of my life. Let’s just pray to the gods that my kids don’t inherit it otherwise we’ll be stocking up on ice and band aids.