How did that happen?

After shopping for my daughter's graduation party today I loaded the back of my Suburban and cracked my shin pretty hard on the hitch...not the hitch but the adapter thingy. The hitch wasn't even put on the Suburban. As I grabbed my leg and tried not to use every expletive I knew ,I started laughing at the following trip down memory lane.....

When I was a little girl, I was so very clumsy. I remember one summer night my brother dragged me in the bathroom and decided to get my arms and legs clean. "You're so dirty Tiff! When was the last time you took a bath?!" As I'm screaming & yelling from the scrub down, my mom walks to the bathroom door and tries not to laugh. She quietly whispers something in Ron's ear. He says, "Oh." turns the water off, tosses me a towel and walks away leaving me with my mom. I'm sure she's going to do the same thing. I knew I had a bath the night before and that it wasn't dirt, they were bruises. Mom kisses my "boo boos", then dries my legs and asks what happened. This was the first of many times she'd ask this question.

I don't remember my answer that time but I do remember long stories of excitement about the fun we had running around town, riding-or should I say crashing-my bike, rolling down the hill that led to the creek....THIS was a BIG no no but I later found out my brother went to the same spot along the creek and neither of us ever told mom. (this is not to give my own children ideas!). The bottom line was this...at the end of the day I always had fun stories to tell and I always, always had bruises I had no idea how they got there.

One day I ran into the edge of the counter and had an A-HA moment. I ran in to tell my mom I finally had an answer! "The bruise on my hip is from YOUR dumb counter! I always run into it!" She busted up laughing and asked me how long that counter had been there..."all my life"... she laughed harder.

Fast forward a few decades and here I am today holding my shin that is throbbing and has some skin torn off. I look down at my shins and notice for the first time, they are incredibly bumpy, from years of cracking my shins on anything at the perfect height.

One of my many nicknames as a kid was Grace. Mom started calling me that shortly after she started asking me "what happened?" She told me it was because I lacked grace and coordination. Some things really don't change. After years of trying, I did master walking in high heels but I'm still unable to approach anything at shin height without doing some damage and I'm sure causing laughter from anyone who's fortunate to see my gracefulness in action.  I'm always glad to be able to entertain and bring happiness to someone else's day, even if it's unintentional.  Stick around, I'm sure I'll trip, fall or bang my shin on something again today.