Accident-Prone?

As a kid, I was always covered in dirt and almost always had stains on my clothes. I was that kid that just wanted to get into everything and when my parents took me camping I was the first one to find some way to get dirty. There's a picture of me, at the age of three where it looks like I could have very well been eating dirt and then spreading it all over my body, I'm covered in layer of brown - the tannest I've ever been.

Again, at about the age of four, is my favorite home video of all time - a birthday party of mine at the gymnastics center. We basically rented out the place for an hour and just ran and ran and ran. We jumped into the giant foam pit and climbed in and out of big foam structures. It was basically a four-year-old's dream, just uninterrupted playing for an hour. Included in this deal was a gymnastics instructor - basically a babysitter who was paid to wear us out while our parents stood on the sidelines chatting.

Part of the fun were these big (3' x 3') foam blocks that were stacked on one side of the gym in a pyramid that stood probably 9' high. All of us kids would climb onto the pyramid and jump off of it onto a big pad in a fit of giggles. My adventuresome spirit came out and I got the brilliant idea to upstage my friends with a new dismount. I climbed onto the top of the pyramid, turned around so my back was facing the pad, lay down and slowly slid off the block backwards with my arms hanging on to the top of the block. As I got ready to drop, my arms caught the block and as I fell the block came tumbling after. First, I hit the pad, and then the giant block landed on top of me. My mom was videotaping the whole thing while talking to a friend of hers, and as the viewer watches me fall, you hear my mom simultaneously saying "whoop! there she goes..."

But here's the ridiculous part - I didn't get hurt. I'm sure I cried for a little bit out of shock, as four-year-olds do, but not a bruise or a scratch on my body. I share this story only to point out that I would often do the most ridiculous things, and I suffered no injuries.

Even with this adventuresome spirit of mine, I surprisingly never broke a bone (excluding a couple of untreated fingers during volleyball season) and I've never had stiches (although I probably should have that time my dad hit me in the head with a wrench - nice little scar from that one, thanks Pops!).

I've been playing sports since I was eight, and of course there have been the inevitable minor injuries - sprained an ankle once, a floor burn or two and a potentially broken finger from volleyball, a handful of raspberries from softball, but those were just part of the deal. I had friends that were tearing their ACL's, breaking bones, getting awesome casts in festive colors, but me - I got nothing.

What I have found is that while I escape the major injuries I'm constantly experiencing little accidents. Megan won't let me live down the time I parked in front of her house, jumped out of my car to run inside and somehow managed to trip on the curb, skid on the sidewalk and tear a hole in my jeans. I'm sure if I allowed them, my friends could recount many more of these types of stories.

Until recently, I've felt relatively accident free. In the past four or five years I don't feel as though I've done too many stupid things or fallen unexpectedly. Granted, there still haven't been any major injuries suffered, but for the lack of dangerous situations I've been placing myself in, I'm getting hurt a surprising amount. Just in the last few weeks... I looked down at my hand and saw that one of my fingers was bleeding after packing up camp on our recent camping trip. I smashed my thumb in my desk drawer scraping off a chunk of skin. I've got an inexplicit cut on my knuckle that's scabbing over, I ran into the corner of our couch the other night leaving a mighty bruise on my thigh. Not to mention the slice I took out of my finger with the serrated knife while chopping onions (see prior post)... and to top it all off, I got a terrifyingly fast softball to the shin while playing third base at our game on Tuesday night.

I'm afraid that it's all starting to catch up to me. All those injuries escaped during my childhood might be coming back to haunt me. If this is the case, you might as well stick me in a bubble because I'm pretty sure the worst is yet to come.