Sometimes Clumsiness Can Be a Good Thing

I had one of those moments today when everything seemed to fall apart. I was on my own, and after church I went through the Wendy’s drive-thru and got lunch – spicy chipotle boneless wings Yum! I brought them home and decided to eat at my computer desk (multi-tasking: eating and facebooking at the same time). As I put my hand into the bag to pull out my meal, I found that the top of the container had come off. These wings are spicy because they are covered and surrounded by a lot of chipotle sauce – a red sauce that was now starting to cover everything else in the bag (my fries, my napkins, my straw). Right beside my printer, I set the open container on the cleanest napkin I could find in the bag. Next, I pulled everything else out of the bag – only dripping sauce a few times on my desk. As soon as I thought everything was taken care of, the pile of miscellaneous papers that I had stacked on my printer decided to fall – right into my bowl of spicy chipotle boneless wings!! Arghhh. I grabbed the next cleanest napkin and started wiping off all of my papers. Now I was done, right? I grabbed one of my sweetner packets to mix in my tea. I shook it before opening it and wouldn’t you know it – apparently it also had some sauce on it. This time I got splattered! Really? Lunch was supposed to be so much simpler than that!

I had to laugh about that just like I laughed at myself last night when I was checking out at Meijer. I had purchased some Christmas lights and went through one of the self checkout lanes. Everything scanned in just fine, and I used my card to pay for my purchase. After I signed my name on the little electronic line, I tried to hang the pen back on the display. It fell out. I tried again. It fell out again. One more try – and yes, it fell out once again. (Big sigh.) I finally flipped it over and stuck it in. YES! It worked. NO! The string attached to the pen had somehow looped through the handle of my purse, and I was now connected to the machine. Are you kidding me? I laughed and tried one more time to get it all put together right. Rolling my eyes at myself, I wondered who was behind what video camera laughing themselves off a chair!

Not every clumsy moment is bad. As I read through the notes that my basketball teammates wrote in my high school memory book, a common theme runs through them – “Thanks for letting us laugh at (with) you.” I had a knack of alleviating the most tense moments without even trying. I do remember one of those times. We were at the Coliseum practicing for an upcoming tournament game. The coach was having us go through a drill where we were being double-teamed (more than one person was trying to get our ball when we were holding it). Our goal was to pass the ball to another teammate without losing it to the two defenders. We were not doing a great job, and Coach was getting mad (which meant some yelling). All of a sudden I got the ball where the guards usually stand, and I panicked! (I played near the basket and rarely ever dribbled the ball.) I got rid of the ball alright! In my alarm at being double-teamed, I threw the ball straight up and HIGH – it hit the marquee hanging from the ceiling of the coliseum (really high). If you have ever been in the Fort Wayne Memorial Coliseum, you should be able to picture what I am talking about. Coach just started laughing, and I think that ended our drill. It definitely ended the tension that had been mounting!

I can’t fake anything. That makes my clumsiness come in handy at times. More than once in my life, I have been on a date and accidently slipped or fallen. (Truly, those were definitely accidents.) That’s when my date would tuck my hand in the crook of his arm or even put his arm around my waist. Very nice. If I had tried to trip “on purpose” it would have come out so fake! I think I just have an ornery angel who hip chucks me to the ground sometimes to encourage the romance of the moment! Ha!

I got a call yesterday that made my day (maybe my month). What led up to the call happened a couple years ago when I had quite a fall. My children and I were in Toronto, Canada, with some friends of ours. We had been in a beautiful place called High Park where I was taking a lot of pictures with my Canon Powershot camera (a very nice and somewhat expensive camera). You have to understand – photography is one of my favorite hobbies and I love my camera! As I took a sidewalk that slightly ramped down to the street, my foot hit a patch of mud and I went flying. Bodily, my knee got the worst of it. As for my clothes – let’s just say we went through lots of baby wipes to get the mud off my pants. What really hurt was the other effect of my falling. When I slipped, my right arm flew up hard (probably as a balancing instinct), and everything in my hand went flying. I had a bag and it landed with a small thud (nothing major)…but what flew higher (because it weighed more) and caused us all to silently watch in horror as it bounced down the street not once but THREE times was my camera! Argh!!! My son quickly retrieved it, turned it on, and then slowly shook his head sadly at me. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to think about it. Of course, I had to move because I was sitting in a mud pile in the street. I didn’t touch the camera until after I and my pants were as clean as they could be. Then I said a little prayer and turned on the camera. It worked! It did have some problems – like it wouldn’t zoom in and the lens would not go in when I turn off the camera. It also would once in awhile turn off as I was trying to take a picture, and  it would tell me I had a lens error. Other than that, though, it was working fine and still taking great pictures. That was good because the next two days were going to be spent at Niagara Falls. When we got back home, I took my camera to the Geek Squad at Best Buy. I had accidental insurance (lovingly called accidental death insurance) on my camera thanks to my father who knew how I sometimes don’t land on my two feet. After a few weeks, I got my camera back. It worked, but I never thought it was as good as it was before it went bouncing down a parking lot. Fast forward to a month ago. We were with our same friends in a beautiful place in Kentucky (the Red River Gorge). My camera starting having lens error problems again. I was able to take pictures, but it definitely was not working the way it should. A week before Thanksgiving, I took it back into Best Buy, and I hoped that I would see my camera sometime before Christmas. That leads me to yesterday’s phone call. A geek from the squad at Best Buy left a message on my phone – I had been approved for a replacement camera. Replacement?? Very nice! I went in and was given the very latest Canon Powershot. For those of you camera enthusiasts – this camera has 35x optical zoom! My goodness, you can see the nosehairs on a fly with this thing! Without my muddy fall a couple years ago, I would not have this great Christmas present right now. Yep, sometimes clumsiness can be a good thing!