KLUTZ

Worn Like A Badge of Honor

Without fail … and with at least an eighty-nine percent certainty … if I’m wearing white, I’ll spill something down my front.

This seems to be an inherited trait. Just like the ability to roll your tongue, which I can do, and hitchhiker’s thumb, which I don’t have. My grandma was first, then my mom, then me … and it’s possible we aren’t the only family that has passed down the Klutz Gene.

As an aside, I’m curious to know more about the inventor of the Tide To Go pen—something I recommend not leaving the house without.

My husband says he has proof that I’m a klutz and loves to tell the carpet cleaning story. Back when I refused to hire to have anything done … and full disclosure, I still struggle with this … I would drag out the Hoover wet vac and clean the carpets. We had rose petal  pink shag carpeting that ran wall-to-wall in every room except the kitchen. I know it sounds awful, but I have to tell you that I considered it a selling point!

We had looked at several townhouses and narrowed it down to two choices. I wanted the one with the lovely rose petal pink carpeting. I loved that carpet. But cleaning it took hours! Dragging the machine back and forth, filling and dumping the canister full of water. Well, one evening after cleaning the carpet, I was reminding everyone, or should I say yelling at everyone from the kitchen, how hard I had worked and that the carpet was still a little damp. I insisted that they remove their shoes before they came inside for dinner. The kids weren’t teenagers yet and we had one dog. I had made a plexiglass gate to keep the dog in the kitchen. The gate spanned across the hall that ran between the kitchen and dining room.

So, I called everyone to dinner.

I had made a family favorite, spaghetti with meat sauce. I loaded up a huge platter with noodles and sauce, rounded the corner at full speed, and was stopped dead in my tracks by the plexiglass gate. The momentum of the crash propelled the spaghetti right off the plate and I watched in horror as it flew across the dining room and landed on the pink shag carpet.

Everyone gets to laughing so hard at that story that my husband breaks into his second favorite Stephanie-is-a-klutz story … a family trip to the beach. One of my favorite things to do is play games on the beach. One Easter Sunday, I loaded our Easter baskets with beach toys and new plastic kites for each member of the family. While dinner was in the oven, the four of us headed to the beach to try them out. Flying a kite on the beach is usually pretty simple since there’s almost always a breeze. Well, on this day, the breeze was a little light and I was demonstrating how to toss the kite into the air and walk backwards to get it up and flying. I was walking back, the kite was rising slowly into the air when—BAM—I fell into a huge hole! Right there in the middle of the long stretch of white sand was a huge, coffin-sized pit. And it was deep. The kids had to come pull me out!

The plexiglass gate story and the giant hole on the beach story are funny, but I’m not sure they provide the proof my husband claims they do. However, I do own up to my problem with wearing white.

I accept the title because I’ve earned it … Klutz.

Photo by Ana GG on Unsplash