The first of what promises to be many posts about my clumsiness

I walked into a table today.  This, it turns out was not an intelligent thing to do as it still hurts several hours later.  The table was exactly hip height and I jabbed the corner right into the joint and my entire leg had pins and needles for a while afterwards.

This, though, is nothing compared to Christmas Eve this year, on which day I managed to close a dishwasher on my fingers, roll my ankle on a stone in the garden and stab myself with a knife, this last being particularly impressive as it was right in the middle of the back of the hand in which I was holding the knife.  I kinda want to explain the knife thing but I think it may well be more fun to let you try and imagine how I managed that feat; I do not condone, though, going right now to pick up a knife and trying to get the blade anywhere near the back of the hand in which you hold it.

This is all to say that I am very clumsy.  It is something that often surprises people because I pretty conscious of my body and movement the majority of the time as I have done quite a bit of dancing in my musical theatre.  I do not know why this is either and if I could work out what I do differently onstage to the rest of the time I would definitely change it because being clumsy is neither charming nor amusing, it is painful and humiliating, something that Hollywood doesn't tell you.

The really annoying thing about it all, though, is that after a good twenty years of people expecting you to be able to put one foot in front of the other without falling over and bruising at least sixty percent of your body, they tend to give more annoyance than assistance when you do hurt yourself.  The only solution is to laugh about it, mainly because the alternatives are to cry or to cover yourself in bubblewrap and only buy plastic cups.

Hmm, I promised to only do upbeat and positive posts this year, didn't I?  Well in that case, I'm taking ownership of my clumsiness, it is part of who I am and although I may not like it at times it has as much to do with making me me as my hair colour or height.  I hope to be less clumsy in the future, but in the meantime I will just pick myself up, dust myself off, wince at the various pains from this particular fall, and hold my head high as I walk on.