As
a child, did you ever wonder if maybe, by some weird chance, you
were adopted and nobody had ever told you? That maybe, your “real”
parents were famous actors in Hollywood, perhaps…or wealthy oil
tycoons…
Well, the genetics that have been passed down in my family have
proven to me many times that I am indeed, Betty’s daughter. And
Jordan, if she had any doubts, has long since decided that she is
genetically related to her Grandma Bell. How can we be so sure? It
is our clumsiness that binds us together. Nobody can be so accident
prone as the three of us, and believe it or not, I’m probably the
most graceful of the three, so that doesn’t say much for Mom or
Jordan!
For as long as I can remember, my mother has been having crazy
mishaps that, after years of seeing them, begin to be comical. She
is well known in our family for her coffee spills. I never thought
much about it until the spills began adding up. One such time
occurred when Ryan was a baby and we had gone shopping and stopped
at a drive thru restaurant to get a quick meal on the way home. Most
people order a cold drink with their meal, but Betty had to have
coffee…coffee that was approximately 211 degrees, just on the verge
of boiling. She sat the cup on the floor of the car between her feet
while she rummaged around for something in her purse and as I
stepped on the gas to leave, the coffee tipped over…right into her
shoe! I will give my mom credit as she managed not to fill the car
with expletives, but she did yell a bit. Her ankle immediately
became blistered and she hurried to remove her shoe which was filled
with the steaming drink. You’d think that would teach her that
coffee is not the drink of choice to sip in a moving vehicle, but
no…she always has a filled-to-the-brim cup ready when heading out
the door. While on a trip to Tennessee, we had stopped at a motel
for the night. In the morning we all took advantage of the free
continental breakfast and Betty was going to get her money’s worth
in coffee. She sat at the little table, drinking several cups, then
went back and refilled her Styrofoam cup to the top and began
pushing the plastic lid on. I guess she didn’t realize her own
strength as she smashed the cup flat and coffee sprayed out
everywhere…of course covering her clean clothes. The scalding hot
coffee probably burned her skin, but she was more concerned with the
stains.
Another time, she and my dad were entering a grocery store and
(don’t ask me why), but she was carrying a cup of boiling brew in
with her and the door swung open automatically and the coffee was
sent flying all over her clothes. On another trip to Steamboat
Springs a few years ago, we were loading up our suitcases to head
home and Mom was the last to get in, of course with her trusty
“no-leak” coffee cup. She got back out for some reason and the
coffee tipped over, all over the interior of the car. These coffee
mishaps go on and on…it’s become a family joke and whenever someone
sees her carrying a cup of coffee, they run for their lives.
She also has mishaps while doing the most mundane chores. I wish I
had a dollar for every time that she has reached into a sinkful of
soapy dishwater and grabbed the sharp edge of a butcher knife. She
always has bandages and gauze wrapped around her
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appendages. If it’s not a cut, it’s a burn from reaching into the
oven too exuberantly and touching the red coils with her forearm. If
a social worker looked at all the scars, they would probably think
she’d been abused for years by some sick bastard.
One summer, she was up on a stepladder and she somehow fell off, her
knee coming down on a long, exposed bolt, which went deeply into the
knee and surrounding tissue. I can’t quite figure out how she did
that. Just a few days ago, she wrote to say that she had been taking
down the Christmas decorations and had to use a stepstool to reach
above the fireplace. Of course, the stool flipped over and she came
crashing down, cracking her skull and landing on her ribs.
The times she has rammed her feet into chair legs, table legs,
anything really, and has broken a toe are too numerous to mention.
Her toes stick out every which way and are crooked from all the
breaks she has suffered over the years. Now, on this point, I can
certainly commiserate with her as I have inherited her knack for
breaking toes. The first time this happened was when Jordan was a
little girl of about 2 years. I had put her to bed at night and had
then gone to my own bed for a bit of shuteye. No more had I dozed
off, than she wandered down the hallway, through our bedroom (right
past her dad who dozed peacefully) and came around to my side of the
bed and began tapping me on the shoulder. “What do you want?” I
groggily asked her. “Will you put me back to bed?” she asked in a
cute voice. I wasn’t thrilled, but climbed out of bed and made my
way to her bedroom, tucked her in and went back to bed. I just began
to drift off again, when she repeated the whole scene. I got back
up, put her to bed and warned her to stay there. Back to bed I went.
It wasn’t long before I felt a tap-tap-tap on my shoulder. “Will you
put me back to bed?” she asked. By now, the voice wasn’t nearly as
cute and I was getting pretty irate, so I pulled myself back out of
bed and grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down the hallway,
saying “You’re #%@@*& right I’ll put you back to bed, and you’d
*@$%&* better stay there this time!” I stormed back to our bedroom,
rage filling every pore, indignant at having my sleep disturbed for
a third time, when WHAM! I had run into our safe with my little toe!
I started screaming in pain and made it to the bed where I moaned
and groaned and rolled and hollered in pain. That poor toe was
definitely broken…it pointed straight out to the side. Poor Jordan
must have been pretty scared as she didn’t have the guts to get back
out of bed again. Since that time I have broken the same toe a few
more times on a playpen, high chair and such.
Well, the genes have progressed down the chain and now have been
discovered in Jordan. Just like her Grandma Bell, Jordan has
severely cut her fingers on knives in the dishwater, she has been
burned while cooking and most recently, she stubbed her toe on the
couch leg while talking on the phone to me. One minute she was
gabbing away, the next she was screaming and hung up on me. A few
minutes later, her husband called me back to say that he was taking
her to the hospital since it was a Sunday. I didn’t know what the
hospital could do, but she was in the background screaming in agony,
so away they went. It turned out that she had torn some ligaments in
her foot and had to be on crutches for awhile. Yep, the genes are
there.
Now, we watch in horror as little Peyton trips, falls and stumbles
over everything and know without a doubt…she has the gene! |