I took our Christmas decorations down on New Year's Day. I try to do that every year. Most years, I manage within a day or two. But there was a particular October...
When I drove cab, there were times when things got a little hectic. One of my regular customers, N., used to call for rides. After a while, he realized that time is not one of my strong suits. This led to the following type of phone conversation:
N.: "So, I'm at work, I'm ready to head home, but first, I want to swing by the store and my brother's place. How soon can you be here to pick me up?"
Me: "Hmmm...ten minutes."
N.: "Ten minutes your time, or ten minutes real time?"
I finally was able to respond with, "Ten minutes my time, fifteen minutes real time."
So, October arrived and I realized that the outside lights I'd tacked to the front of the house the previous December were definitely worse for wear; they would not last through the upcoming holiday season. The lights really needed to come down.
I grabbed our ladder, put it up, then started taking the lights down.
Within minutes, M. came outside with my cell phone. "N.'s on the phone," M. told me.
I leaned down and took the phone. "Hey, N., what's up?"
"So, what are you doing?"
"Taking down the Christmas lights," I said, juggling phone and light strand.
There was a long pause, then, "No, really, what are you doing?"
"Taking down the Christmas lights!" Geez, wasn't he listening?
"Look, it's October. Do you really think I'm going to believe that? Seriously, if you don't want to tell me what you're doing..."
I tried to stiffle a laugh. "N., this is me. You know, as in Ten minutes your time or ten minutes real time..." Now we were both laughing.
That was the last time I waited past the first week in January to take down the lights. But I no longer use a ladder to put up or take down the lights. I sold our ladder at a yard sale. None of my neighbors will let me borrow theirs'. There's a reason for this...
Halloween, 2010, I decided to clear some branches and leaves off the roof. Simple enough. Set up the ladder on the cement driveway, grab the broom, tell M. he had to hold the ladder...At one point, with my knees against the edge of the roof, I leaned waaay to the right to move a branch off the roof...and the ladder started to fall. I fell eight to ten feet onto the cement driveway. Several neighbors rushed over to make sure I didn't move, as M. dialed 911. After an ambulance ride to the one hospital in the county with a trauma center, I spent five hours in the emergency room; an hour of this was spent in radiology for half-a-zillion X-rays. Amazingly, nothing was broken. It might be because, as a major klutz (think Chevy Chase and Gerald Ford, times ten), I'd learned how to fall, or maybe because I've got half-a-dozen Guardian Angels. Maybe I was just lucky.
I've been a klutz most of my life. True klutzy story: When I was a kid, I was always tripping over my feet. I've never been graceful. You want to see graceful, my sister was (and I'm guessing still is) graceful. I never was.
One day, when I was in first grade, the school nurse called my mother to inform her that she was sure I had a mild case of cerebral palsy. (This was back in the day when every school had a full-time school nurse; it was good for the kids, and gave any nurses who had school-aged kids a job that coincided with their kids' schedule. Hello, school administrators - anybody listening???)
Since I was the oldest of three kids, and therefore, the experiemtal model, every pronouncement, scratch, scrape - EVERYTHING - set off bells and whistles. Mom rushed me to the pediatrician's office, a man who knew just about every family in our neighborhood, made housecalls, and had a very warped sense of humor. (Trust me, that warped sense of humor should be required of pediatricians; the best ones seem to have it!) He checked me out, had me stand on one foot, hop, skip, and generally ran me through my paces. Finally, he sat my mother down and told her, in his stern doctor voice, "I'm afraid I know what's wrong with Robin. She has (dramatic pause here) a terminal case (another pause) of the congenital klutzies."
Up until that last word, my mother was dying inside; then, she was tempted to make sure that the doctor was dying.
Side note: This same doctor had to pull a decorative stone from my sister's nose. When A. was two, most of the women in our neighborhood had large decorative indoor plants with decorative rocks around the base. A. picked up a pale blue one from our plant and shoved it too far for Mom to reach. Off to the doctor's, where this warped man managed to get the rock out, then looked at it before telling my mother, "I always thought people in your neighborhood had rocks in their heads - and now I have proof!"
Another klutzy story: M. has inherited my lack-of-grace. He's been known to take a tumble over a 4-foot-high bright orange traffic cone. Granted, it was dark out and I'd been walking just ahead of him...He also has a good-sized scar on his hand from a box cutter; he was aiming for a box and missed...
Another story: I'd considered trying out for cheer-leading as a high school freshman. My uncooridnation kept me off the squard. That's okay, I ended up playing basketball, which I found enjoyable. (You're also allowed to occasionally fall while shooting hoops without it being considered strange.)
Will I ever be graceful? Probably not.
At least when my parents went looking through family names to give me, they didn't name me Grace...
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