Falling Down

Last Tuesday, at approximately 3pm, I walked right into a lamp post.In Washington, DC. In public. With many witnesses.As soon as I hit the damn thing, head first, I had the normal reaction: shock, followed by anger at the momentary physical hurt, followed by supreme embarrassment at having done such a thing in public.I skulked away from the scene of the accident as quickly as possible, rubbing the quickly growing lump rising on the top of my head.Oh...right...and why the top of my head you might inquire?Well, I was doing what about 99.9% of Washingtonians do on a normal basis: texting and emailing while walking.Head bent down over my Blackberry, furiously thumb-typing some ever-so-important message that needed to be sent in that exact second...and subsequently crashing into a lamp post on my way to pick up a cup of coffee.As I was relating the whole embarrassing scene to a colleague a few minutes later in my office, she made me feel immediately better by assuring me that not only had she crashed into lamp posts while walking and texting; she had also stepped in unseen piles of dog crap and, once, fell down in the middle of the street when she failed to see a broken tile in the sidewalk."At least you didn't fall down," she said. "There I was, sprawled out in the middle of the damn sidewalk on K Street with my skirt over my head and about a dozen people asking me if I was OK...it was mortifying."That got me to thinking about the last time I fell down.I think it was in 2007 at my friend Kristen's holiday party when I slipped on the ice on the way down her stairs and ended up sprawled out on my back in the middle of her front yard.I rarely fall down.Or crash into things.Or bump into people.Or hurt myself in the normal process of living.In short, although verbally I can be the most clumsy person in the world, I am not physically clumsy. This is a good thing.My boyfriend is an entirely different beast, however.Chas is by far the most accident-prone human being I have ever been with.Thank goodness, the nature of these accidents is normally not of the life-threatening variety but he is clumsy...amazingly so.The first instance of my noticing this trait in my beloved happened shortly after we moved in together. Chas was painting our bedroom and had meticulously cleared the room of all furniture and debris. He is almost obsessively neat and organized so I stayed out of his way while he set about his tasks. (I would have had paint on the ceiling, the furniture, the dog, and myself within ten seconds...so I steered clear of the project.)Suddenly, from the living room, I heard him gasp and then start cursing furiously.I ran in to see what had happened and found him clutching his hand while blood spurted all over the place as he held the paint brush in shock.I am not particularly prone to panic but the sight of all that blood scared the hell out of me."What could he have possibly done to himself in this room devoid of furniture, glass, and even dust bunnies?" my mind raced.I grabbed his hand to take a look and found, thank God, a relatively minor slash in the top of his finger that just happened to be bleeding like an arterial wound."How did you do this?" I asked, trying to figure out how he could have possibly injured himself in such a sparse environment.He pointed accusingly at the place where the wall meets the baseboard.And there, right in plain sight, was the end of a tack that had previously held a cable in place.The top of the tack was bright green and the most obvious thing in the world to my eye. But, somehow, he had missed it.I was about to ask, "How did you miss that? It is glaring! I would have seen that immediately!" but then decided to shut my mouth...it was obviously just a rare oversight.Except it wasn't. Not at all.Over the next few months, I realized that my boyfriend might be the world's biggest klutz.What struck me as odd about this whole thing is that Chas is a fine athlete. From football to softball to golf to darts, he is a very poised and precise athlete. If he isn't a star in all of those sports, he is a daunting challenger and he possesses a level of skill rarely seen in men beyond the high school age.To add to that, he is also, as previously mentioned, the most meticulous man I have ever met. He is very neat and organized. Chas defines "detail-oriented."But, a couple of weeks later, while driving him around while he dropped off some information for the dart league he runs, I sat in my car and watched him trip out of the door of the neighborhood restaurant and sprawl out on the sidewalk.About to get out of the car and run to his aid, I saw him shoot me a look that said, "Don't embarrass me further, just ignore it!" So I did.Then, a week after that, while "helping" me in the kitchen, he sliced half of his fingernail off with the potato peeler."Holy shit! Are you OK? How did that happen? That is the most blunt potato peeler in the world!" I said, running for the band-aids.Or, when he was helping me in my garden later that week and somehow managed to drag the rake over his foot and bruise his toes black."Honey, are you OK?! Dear Lord...how did you do that?!" I had asked.Or, a few weeks after that, when the elevator doors at the swank beachfront property he manages in southern New Jersey closed on his head.That time the EMTs came and, when he got home from work, there was no ignoring the fact that he had a welt the size of a potato on his forehead."What happened?!" I asked again, getting the distinct impression that these accidents might be more frequent than I had previously thought.He looked sheepish and initially refused to tell me, embarrassed."The elevator doors closed on my head," he finally admitted later that evening as I handed him another towel packed with ice.When faced with such information, my natural instinct sways between wanting to have a good belly laugh to being concerned as I do love this man and do not want him hurting himself in any way.Again, wanting to ask, "How the hell do you not notice the elevator doors looming to a close on your head?!!" or "Why the hell was your head in the path of the elevator doors?!!" I opted for a more subtle approach."Does this happen a lot, Honey? I am not making a judgement call but you seem to sustain an awful lot of minor injuries for one human being in a very short span of time..." I observed.Again, looking sheepish, he admitted, "You are the first person to ever notice this aloud but, yes, I do seem to have a lot of accidents. I fall down a lot.""You fall down?" I queried."Yes, I fall down a lot. Years ago, when I worked for the post office, I used to fall down delivering mail all the time. And I do stupid things like get banged up a lot. I don't know why and, honestly, I just don't really notice it anymore...it's been like that since I was a kid," he said.That was when I flipped back in my mental database to all of the stories Chas's friends had told me:Chas getting blown off the boat and tearing his hand open while trying to decorate the ship for Christmas.Chas breaking his leg over a beer bottle.Chas knocking out a bunch of teeth in a football game (luckily, they were saved).I had to admit that the evidence was all there from the get-go...I had just not put two and two together: My boyfriend is the most accident prone human being on Earth and his past and present are testimony to that fact.This started off a research project on my part as to why certain people are accident-prone and certain people are not.The theory that most unsettled me is that people who inadvertently "hurt themselves" are really masochists who don't feel that they deserve love.I decided to confront Chas with my deepest fears......and he laughed."C'mon, Patti, you know me. I actually love myself too much sometimes and can be obnoxious. Besides, as good-looking as I am, do you really think I want to ruin that with a bunch of scars and nicks? Please..." he replied.I had to admit he had a point.Chas is not arrogant but he does have a healthy sense of himself and he is very handsome and meticulous about preserving that. He is not into self-demolition."OK, so what is it then?" I asked. "I have never met someone who is so accident-prone but, at the same time, so, so...together..." I said.He shrugged. He had no answers for me.He lives with it, so should I. It's just the "way it is."When I called Chas last Tuesday night to relate my horror of having walked into the lamp post while using my Blackberry, he laughed."Oh, don't worry about it. Today I was vacuuming and the cord got wrapped around my ankle and I didn't notice it until I tried to move too far in the other direction and tripped. I hit my head on the couch and basically knocked myself out. I woke up and the dog was licking my face but I swear he was laughing at me at the same time...do dogs laugh?" he asked.I think dogs do laugh although the thought of my boyfriend knocking himself out while vacuuming is unsettling.But with an accident-prone boyfriend, I measure my laughter and concern equally these days, what else can I do?But he is NOT getting that Blackberry or Iphone he so badly wants for his birthday.Over my dead body...or his banged up one.