Marcie "Mom" Glanzer Column

Last Updated 1/5/07

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"Clumsy Genes"
by Marcie Glanzer

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

 

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!

 

Ryan Trivia: My first NHL game was attended 11/29/06 when the San Jose Sharks beat the Minnesota Wild, 2-1.