Celebrating Klutzes… (Klutz Press’s Intergalactic Headquarters, ie their retail store, is a few miles up the road.)
I mentioned the hairdryer incident yesterday because I wanted to warn off others. It didn’t burn the hair, it just wrapped it around and around the insides and Richard couldn’t even take it apart to get at it without cutting my hair off anyway.
This morning, I checked the back of that one (Michelle’s) and then my own: mine had been designed to be much better at deflecting the possibility; hers, designed to be lightweight for travel, had sideways plastic stripes with equally-wide open gaps between them at the back. Be careful out there.
She said later that when I’d yelled “Help!” she had never heard it from me like that but once, the time that…
When our kids were little, the girls were in a bunkbed with Sam on the top. Age gave privileges. One evening, tucking them in, I put one foot on the edge of Michelle’s bunk to hoist myself partway and then hopped up on top of the tall dresser to have some quiet end-of-the-day time with my eldest, much enjoyed by both of us with me at eye level up near the ceiling with her. The novelty of coming into her territory for a moment.
And then I hopped straight down.
With my pocket catching on the drawer knob and pulling the whole dresser crashing down on me.
A stunned not very loud can’t get my breath have to say something “Help?” The kids yelled for their dad.
Richard came running and then stopped, bowled over laughing in the hallway. I knew, yes of course it was funny–but tomorrow, okay, hon, can we do something about this first, I’m still under this thing okay? And I’d landed on my wad of keys in the other pocket–getmeouttahere. He got it off fast, apologizing for his initial reaction. But he was right–it WAS funny. It was so classic klutzy us.
I did not know that all these years later, Michelle remembered exactly how I’d sounded in that first moment.
And it was no big deal, I was okay.
And it’s no big deal. I do have about a dozen random stray hairs sticking up on top of my head, but they’ll just add character to the family photos in another nephew’s wedding coming up. Like when my then-four-year-old son cut his hair instead of the construction paper on the long car ride on the way to my brother’s. Family tradition.
Anybody got a klutz story to tell?