I have two awful, debilitating conditions. Endometriosis being the most volatile and painful condition. Extreme clumsiness being by far the most embarrassing.
It’s not sweet clumsy like Bridget Jones or Miranda. It’s absolutely devastatingly, red-faced inducingly, stuck on crutches for 6-8 weeks at a time type of clumsy. I can’t just trip up or fall over and walk away with my head held high with a beautiful man shaking his head and laughing but falling in love me. Oh no. I have to fall over and not be able to get back up again. Let me take you on a journey of a couple of my more ridiculous clumsy adventures…
There were a couple of occasions in my previous incarnation as a call centre goddess. The worst one by far was one Tuesday evening at the end of my shift in November. I was walking down the stairs and could see the hubby waiting to pick me up outside the main doors. I was happy – not just because it was the end of my shift, but because I had a college course that night – and I’d just been to a concert and was still on a high from it. That happiness lasted approximately two seconds longer. I stepped down and somehow my foot missed the step I was aiming for and it landed on it’s side one step lower. I clattered to my backside in a rush of green parka coat and red handbag. And a lot of swearing.
A couple of my colleagues were a couple of steps lower than me and heard my tumble. One turned round and rushed back upstairs yelling ‘First Aider!’ When a First Aider asked who it was for, the git replied ‘guess’. And, they guessed.
I still don’t know whether the fact that he replied ‘guess’ or the fact that they did guess pissed me off more.
Then there was the fact that I fell off the chair last Sunday when we went to the small gig with my brother. Well, I didn’t actually fall off the chair. I just went to sit in a chair that wasn’t there any more. And ended up hitting another chair on the way down. Giving myself a hell of a bruise (which is still there) and a swollen elbow (which still hurts – although it’s not broken, just badly bruised). I was stone cold sober.
Speaking of being sober and injuring myself… The long weekend over New Year myself and my best friend spent away in Dublin is the perfect example. The entire time we were there I was pretty much plastered. Apart from the morning before we were due to leave. I decided the flat we were staying in was in serious need of a clean and so in my socks on a laminate floor I started to sweep. A little bit too vigorously. I ended up breaking my toe. Not entirely sure how, I just know I slipped and whacked it on the door jamb. As you do.
I’d fallen over so many times that weekend in Dublin. Cobbled streets, beer and a clumsy student don’t mix particularly well. But the only time I really hurt myself was that morning when I broke my bleeding toe while I was sober.
Then there were all the times when I was a student that I wound up on crutches. Absolutely, genuinely too many to list. Some of them drunken exercises in complete daftness, others just normal happenings. Like the time I was walking with my friend to the booze shop and fell off the curb… oh no, wait… I was a bit drunk then. We were celebrating handing in our dissertations…
Back to the present then. In the call centre I’d regularly bump into the support posts that never ever moved, I just forgot they were there with my complete lack of spacial awareness. I regularly walk past a door and become entangled in the handle. Even when it’s a knob shaped one. I once ran down the stairs so quickly in the MiL’s house that I whacked my forehead on the overhang and knocked myself out so badly I got concussion – I still have the lump nearly nine years later. Not to mention the time I went into a soft play area to rescue the female shaped monster and came out with concussion, whiplash and a tea-towel full of ice on my head.
The fact that this bout of nearly two months on crutches hasn’t been through clumsiness is hard to digest for most people who know me well. Honestly. I didn’t fall, misplace my step or kick anything. The ligaments around my Achilles just gave way. Could happen to anyone.
Diary Of A Faker 