Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Scarred ... for at least the next month!

I've come to the somewhat embarrassing and uncomfortable conclusion that I will never outgrow my teenage clumsiness. This comes as a result of an incident that occurred on Monday night at work.
I have two customers lined up at the counter. The one last in line is late for a meeting, and begs me to let her go first. The other customer obviously doesn't want to be displaced. I tell them I will go to the back and get my coworker...
Cheryl comes out and begins to help Impatient Woman. I start to wrap up the other woman's items, trying to hurry since I feel bad about the delay already. In my haste, I drop her bag on the floor. I bend over swiftly, and the passage of my head through space intersects with the edge of the counter. Now I'm dizzy and disoriented, and the way that the woman is staring at my head clues me in to the fact that this was no ordinary accidental bump.
"Um... I think you should... maybe wash that... it's starting to bleed," she says as I hand her her bill.
In the bathroom, I put peroxide on the cut, wondering in amazement how I could have hit myself hard enough to break open the skin. It refuses to stop bleeding. In my frustration, I finally put a bandaid on it.
My embarrassment lasted the rest of the evening, as the pink bandaid looked rather startling and odd right in the center of my forehead.
Most of my thinking processes shut off for the rest of the evening. I felt a little sick to my stomach.
Yesterday, I was reading in my Developmental Psychology textbook that the average eight year old has gained an understand of spatial relationships and how objects move in space. They can judge the path that something will follow in space. It makes me wonder whether I somehow missed that stage in development, since I don't seem to even have an awareness of the path my own body will travel in space. Even Kevin McCallister on Home Alone has a better awareness of what objects are likely to cause injury if applied with force to one's person.
Now, the evidence of my accident is branded on my forehead in the pattern of a little pink scar and a shiny bump. I wish that I had a photo to post of how I looked with my little bandaid. When my friend Heather saw me she began to laugh for the space of about a minute. All I can say is if my injury brings such joy and mirth to the soul suffering from midterm overdose - well, then I'm willing to sacrifice my dignity for my friends. Besides, there's not much I can do about it anyway!

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