My secret superhero name: Captain Klutz

I hate being a klutz.

The worst part about it is that I’m not a professional klutz, the kind where it’s so ingrained in everything I do, every move I make, every day of my life, that I can just be proud of it.  Where I can take it by the horns, grapple with it, fight with it, and either declare victory or just resign to it being a part of myself that I have to deal with every day, like a recovering alcoholic that’ll never quite get rid of the taste of the booze.

I’m not even really an amateur klutz, where I can still recognize that I have a growing problem and need to make changes to deal with it.  Or at least trumpet my developing klutz skills to the world and strive to perfect my technique to where someday I can become a proud professional.

Still with me?

No, I’m just the occasional, random, danger-to-myself klutz.  The kind to where some common, mundane motion I’ve made 10,000,000,000,000 times before somehow short circuits and results in mishap.  Usually embarrassing, sometimes painful, and occasionally something that requires medical intervention, or an ER.  Just enough to really piss you off and send you into screaming, obscenity-laced rages at the unfairness of it all, likely at the expense of some unseen devil somewhere rolling on the floor of Hell with unrestrained laughter.  The kind of klutziness that likes to wait and show itself randomly at the most inopportune times, usually while holding a sharp object or handling something hot.

Several years ago I was taking tae kwon do classes with my daughter.  Which, despite not being in the best shape I was surprisingly good at.  But I remember the time I received my most painful injury while sparring.  And not from being kicked in the face, or in the crotch, or the knee (which I’ve experienced all of).

I actually somehow managed to kick myself in the leg.

Don’t ask.  ‘Cause I don’t know either.

I ended up debilitating myself for the better part of a week doing that.  Not  from some gallant sparring with a black belt master, where I had held my own despite taking a few painful licks and can now proudly claim I survived, with a few battle scars to show off as badges of honor.  No, I did myself in with my own klutziness.

Another, more extreme example:  at 14, I was riding my ten-speed down the sidewalk near my home.  Nothing fancy, just normal riding.  Suddenly, before I realized what was happening, one of my feet slipped off the pedals and hit the ground, resulting in a total loss of control and me going down hard on the sidewalk.  By far, not the first time I crashed on a bike riding on a hard surface, but this time my arm shot out reflexively to break my fall, resulting in a forearm bent at a 45-degree angle and an ambulance trip to the ER, after which I was in a cast up past my elbow for the better part of the next four months.  My right arm is still slightly crooked from that event.

Of course, when asked by others at school how I did it, I had to embellish it up somewhat.  For adolescent pride’s sake, I made it sound like some epic stunt wipeout gone wrong, and I just bravely gritted my teeth, set my arm in place, walked the three miles to the hospital, and proudly announced, “Doc!  Cast me up and let me go!  And no, I don’t need pain meds!”

Riiiiight.

Because you can’t admit to your fellow high-school freshman that your klutziness had struck again at a bad moment, with painful consequences.

And now to the night before last.

My current line of work involves milling the lobes of heavy-duty camshafts, the kind that they use in diesel generators and heavy construction equipment.  Before these cams are turned and milled and sent to heat treat and finishing, the edges of them can be quite sharp.  When actually handling them I almost always have cut-resistant gloves on.  Of course, I can’t write or push buttons on the machine very well with these heavy gloves on, so they do have to come off at times.

On my way to the desk at my workstation, where I fill out the specs on the lot folder, I was walking down an aisleway with some finished parts that I ran earlier.  Something I’ve been doing every night, hundreds of times, in the five months I’ve worked there so far.

As I walked by, I felt my hand whack against the back of a rack.  (No Dr. Seuss jokes, please.)  Cursing to myself, I waited until I got to my desk before I looked at my knuckles, which I figured I did nothing more than bang really good.

There was blood pouring down my hand.

And a blood trail going back the ten feet or so to the rack.

And now a growing pool of blood on my desk, including my night’s paperwork.

I had managed to slice open the back of  my index finger, right between the first and second knuckle.  The cut was only an inch long, but it was gaping open and fountaining blood.  Surprisingly, probably because it was a pretty clean cut, there was very little pain.

I immediately grabbed some shop towels to staunch the bleeding, and motioned over a coworker to get the supervisor on duty.  After the super and his relief (my oops happened right at the 3am supervisor shift change) wrapped up my hand enough to stop the bleeding, I ended up sitting in the supervisor’s office with my hand elevated for the next four hours while they tried to get hold of a manager that could take me to the ER, as per (flawed) procedure.  By the time one got there it was almost 8am (my shift ends at 7am) and he decided to take me to the local clinic that just opened.

To make an already too-long story shorter, I ended up with a tetanus shot and five stitches in my finger.  First stitches I ever got in my life.  And a complimentary urine test, just so they’d have a good excuse to fire me in case I’d smoked a doobie or did some crystal meth on my break before my accident.  Good thing I don’t partake in those silly habits, huh?

At least I was able to go back to work that evening, though on limited duty for the next week.  Not that I wouldn’t mind a night or two off, but I can’t afford it.

Last night the super asked how my hand was doing.  I told him that my shoulder hurt worse from the tetanus shot than my hand, and I was more pissed than anything else from my klutziness that resulted in an inordinate amount of blood that somebody else had to clean and recopy my paperwork.  And the snickers I got when some smartass asked why I was wearing a tampon on my hand.  Okay, that one was actually funny.  But the truth of the matter was that my sense of pride was hurt far more than any physical injury I had.

Because it was all because of random klutziness.

Because it wasn’t the first time I’d really hurt or embarrassed myself being a klutz.  And likely won’t be the last.

And because I absolutely, positively hate it when I’m a klutz.