Klutz IV

The females on the maternal side of my family have issues with balance.

Last year my 80 year old great aunt fell on her face and knocked out a front tooth, the ironic part, she was walking into the dentist office.

Sure my aunt is elderly , but the harsh reality is age is simply not a factor, my mother has been falling since her early 30's.

Its been suggested there is some issue with the inner ear, or the center of balance, or in my mothers case a failure to wear appropriate footwear.

My personal policy in terms of shoes is relatively strict. I own nothing with a heel or pointed toe. I have one pair of sandles, which is really an insult to sandels as they basically cover my enter foot, I wear these only when the tempature is well over 100.

So it terms of good traction I have that covered. Yet I share my mother's DNA and thus I too have had my share of ankle and foot related mishaps. As a result I have broken every toe on both feet except for my big toes.  Yet my self inflicted injuries are not just limited to the lower extremities.

Admittedly I fall, yet my main issue is I tend to slam my feet into both living and inadimate objects, thus I avoid being barefooted.  Recently I fractured my little toe at my office while I was walking around barefoot, which certainly did not comply with  the dress code.  I slammed it right into the side of a credenza.  I didn't report the injury, although it hurt me for a good four months.

Stupid is not a legal defense to a comp injury, nor is clumsy, yet in spite of this knowledge I felt it best to suffer in silence.

A few days ago while walking across the grass I watched Camille literally fall over her own feet, and this was not the first time.  At 3 1/2 her ambulatory skills are reasonably good, thus, although no biological relation to me it appears as though my daughter is a 4th generation klutz.

I was bothered by it when I began to contemplate the fact she would endure of lifetime of constant bruises just above the elbow, as I have,  as a result of being struck in the back of the arm by a door or gate.  Yet on further reflection, perhaps of all my glaring flaws and inadequacies this particular foible may be the least of all evils.

Still the other day I hit myself in the nose with the dryer door (don't ask me I struggle to understand how THAT happened) and it hurt so bad I couldn't talk for five minutes.

Camille cries when her sister tells her she's a boy, so her true threshold for pain is yet to be determined. I haven't told her about the legacy, I'm not sure she would understand.

On the other hand Sadie is completely clued in.

"Camille falls like Mommy," she said a few weeks back.  At the time I was still recovering from a nasty slip and fall incident which happened on the front porch steps after I had hosed down the area.

For now Camille continues to live with the hope she will outgrow her inability to walk on an uneven surface, yet I know to that which she is heir.