Genetic Wiring

I wear thin thong sandals around the house.  I shed my shoes as soon as I get home, replacing them with the nearest thing to naked feet possible.  The problem is that the sandals catch on the edges of the tiles in the kitchen.  We installed the tiles ourselves, so they are not quite as perfect as a professional might have left them.  But I have a special talent for tripping.  Fortunately, I rarely fall; but there’s something about the messaging that goes from my head to my feet that results in:  “Pick them up—oh, not quite so high.”  Maybe if I ate more carrots, my head wouldn’t talk quite so much, and would stop at “pick them up”.

There’s a history of clumsiness in my parentage.  My mother fell over things—parking barriers, uneven wooden decks.  And to make matters worse, my father moves more quickly than he should so he hits corners of things:  the corner of his desk, the door jamb, the refrigerator door, the edge of the sink.  It’s a good thing he doesn’t cook or he’d probably have sliced off his fingers long ago. 

My siblings are not clumsy.  I, however, am the lucky recipient of the fast and clumsy genes.   I would have preferred my mother’s iron teeth and ability to play any piece of music put in front of her or my father’s understanding of U.S. history.  And to be honest, I do have some of their good traits, but I am one clumsy dudette.  My body is liberally sprinkled with bruises.  I have even named some of them:  the bed bruise (where I round the corner of the bed too tightly) on my thigh and the dishwasher bruise (where I walk into the open door) on my shin.  These are marks that have found a cozy home on my body and rarely fade completely.  You would think that my pain sensors would educate me on the hazards of these particular pieces of furniture—especially since I hit them so often.  But these same sensors seem to be fouled up with the messages that are sent to my feet--genetically bad wiring.