Friday, September 30, 2005

BruisyBruise

Here's the thing: I'm kind of a klutz. OK, maybe not kind of; I am a klutz.

Once, when I still worked at the number factory, I was walking down the hallway toward my office with Mary and our VP of Operations following in my wake. Now I had walked down this hallway many hundreds of times in my day; after all, my office lived there. So walking down that particular hallway should have been pretty routine. But alas, nothing is routine if it involves both me and any kind of motor skills or coordination. So when I got to the bend in the hallway (which had ALWAYS been there), I managed to completely miss the yards of open space to my immediate right and plant my face square into the wall. Mary, the world’s most patient best friend, is accustomed to seeing these types of walking fuck ups from me, but Operations didn't spend nearly as much time observing my inability to navigate minor obstacles, and was surprised.

"Did she just run right into the wall?" Operations asked of Patient Mary.

"Yup." Mary checked her wristwatch. "She's about due."

These close encounters with inanimate objects happen far more frequently than even I can imagine. So frequently, in fact, that I very rarely remember them at all. How do I know that these events occur if I can't remember them? Well, by the evidence they leave behind, of course. Because I am always covered in bruises. Always. I always tease whoever I'm currently dating and/or pseudo-dating that people are going to think they beat me because of the purple welts perpetually visible all over my body. (Fish doesn’t beat me by the way. And I don’t beat him either. He fell.)

The current leader of the pack is a quarter sized contusion on the back of my right leg, just above the knee. It is so purple that it’s black, and it’s actually raised like some kind of relief map. Also, it throbs whenever I so much as change my pants. Obviously I backed into something with some serious force. You’d think I’d be able to remember a mishap that would cause that level of damage. But you’d be wrong. A total blank as to how it got there. I only noticed it because I ran a washcloth over it in the shower kind of roughly and was rewarded with a startling pain that almost made me fall forward and achieve a matching bruise in the middle of my forehead.

I love the advice I get from people when I show off my latest transient body art. “Eat more bananas,” people will tell me. “They have potassium.” Or “You need to start taking iron supplements.” Funny how no one ever suggests, “Maybe you should start paying more attention” or “Quit walking into things, you dumb ass.” Because really, giving my body the nutrients it needs to fight the bruising is treating the symptom rather than the problem, isn’t it?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

idea : maybe you got it when you were jumping the fences between my house and boon's on tuesday? just a thought...

amberance said...

Oh, you mean when you tried to get me killed by touching a TREE in the DARK that probably had an army of SPIDERS on it? It's entirely possible.

Mandy said...

Oh hell that's funny! I guess it just comes naturally for some of us. I just found a similar one on the left side of my left knee. Same dark color. My only explanation that I can come up with, is that when you drink, your blood thins, so bruises happen easier. And blur your memory of falling out a second story window.
I'm sorry about the office 'run in' though. It's always worse when witnessed by anyone other than a close friend!

amberance said...

Mandy,

That sad part is that I only drink one night a week most of the time, and even then I end up drunk a shockingly small percentage of the time, so I can't even use alcohol as an excuse!

This one wasn't even so bad. That same VP once had to help clean and bandage my pinky finger when the color copier tried to eat me. And also once made Mary drive me home when I had stayed up working for some 40 straight hours and got all spaced out from the Tired. So I'm sure she thought it was par for the course.

Anonymous said...

i went first... proved that there were no spiders because i came out alive... but NOOO you had to go over the fence...

amberance said...

Heather, you don't understand. They know the difference between you and me. They were WAITING...