I’m a natural born klutz. I have lived most of my life as a klutz and I think that it, perhaps, defines me to a degree. Growing up, I think that I had coordination and a sense of where I am relative to other objects. I don’t know what happened to change this. Perhaps growing taller with the tree-tall legs had some affect? I am almost six feet tall. That is a whole lot of leg length working against me. A whole lot more for gravity to pull down.

Sure, a certain amount of stupidity and lack of foresight leads to a lot of my scraps and bruises. I’m bad about paying attention to what I am doing, which leads to me tripping on chords and hitting the corners of walls as I attempt to leave a room. When trying to pass Mack and the coffee table on the way to the couch, he teasingly beseeches me to “please not knock down his drink. And oh, Anne? There is a chord there. Be aware of that and give it due caution.”

This past weekend, we moved up to the new house that Mack and I will be staying in with my brother. The weekend move represented the end of moving for  us and we couldn’t be more ecstatic. A place! to stay! And unpacking! We have been living in boxes since the end of June, so this end is bittersweet delicious. That’s right: bittersweet delicious.

Mack and I are staying in a finished basement complete with a bathroom, carpeting, and just as comfortable our previous apartments (more so than our apartment in Phoenix, honestly). We have access to the whole rest of the house but the basement is where our bedroom and office is located. The basement, unfortunately (for me) gets really dark when the lights aren’t on in the middle of the night. Couple this with the boxes from the move that have been placed in different rooms to be unpacked… this is recipe for Anne disaster.

Also, you do remember we have three cats who’s mission in life is to get underfoot and make people trip? Being tripped over gives them something else to get offended about, beyond the other injustices life has dealt them.

Before I continue this story (and explain the title) I guess I should cover some of my habits. Usually, in the middle of the night I get up and have to go to bathroom. This is relevant to the story else I wouldn’t have divulged my bathroom habits. Most of the time I can go to the bathroom without incident and injury to myself. There was the instance of Friday night, me tripping over my pajama bottoms and almost wiping out into the wall but (usually) I take care of business and go back to bed.

Monday night was different. I wake up and detangle Brutus from around my neck, Blue off my feet, and Bucky away from my side (this is an every night occurrence) to get up and take care of business. Half asleep, I stumble in the pitch dark and groggily try to remember where boxes and laundry baskets lay so I don’t hit them.

BAM.

I remembered. I left the door half open. And the left side of my face met the side of the door. I justified it before sleeping as: I was sleeping alone that night (Mack being on a business trip) and it gave me that added sense of comfort. Like, if someone broke in they wouldn’t think to look in room with the door half ajar. Pure genius!

After smacking face first (literally) into the door I stumbled back as stars danced in my blacked vision. The sound and force with which I hit the door, naturally, set the cats into a mad panic since OH MY GOD NOISE! and they rapidly shot off the bed running out of the room and hitting my legs as they ran from the noise.

So here I am, clutching my face in the pitch black as I go “OWWWWW” (since it was 4am I wasn’t awake enough to drop the f-bomb) while my legs are numb from the 15-pound torpedos that hit my leg in passing and the cats are running figure eights around the basement since noise! They heard a loud noise and STUFF HAPPENED!

I eventually made it to the bathroom and turn on the light and look at my face and see it pink and swollen. I vaguely wonder if I hit with enough force to cause a concussion but decide I’m tired enough not to care and go back to bed. I wondered, briefly, how long before the cats would start eating my corpse if I died from a concussion and I concluded I probably wouldn’t like to know.

So, my fellow klutzes (I know you are out there) I open the forum to share your stories of run-ins with inanimate objects so we can take comfort in each other and others may have a place to openly laugh at us.

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