devolving

I'm not going to lie to you - this is an embarrassing story. I am not coordinated; in fact, I have always been extremely clumsy. In 7th grade, I broke my right ankle slipping on the ice on the way to school - I thought the dark patch on the ground was water (in the middle of February - did I mention that I also don't have much common sense?). I walk into doors and walls, I hit my head on most everything, and one time - oh, one time, back in 1979, I was walking with my boyfriend Jim down at Kirkwood Mall, and we were saying goodbye to our friend Warren. While saying goodbye, we were walking backwards, away from him, you know, like you do. Well, just as I was turning around to walk forward again, my foot hit something - the plastic seats that are in the middle of the mall for weary shoppers. An elderly couple was sitting on the seat. I fell DIRECTLY ON TOP of the elderly couple, and I threw out my hand to catch myself, only to have it fall straight into the trash can. Sigh - it's a visual. Jim walked away laughing (can you blame him? We broke up shortly after that).

So suffice it so say that although it hurt, I wasn't that surprised when I slammed the toilet lid on my thumb early this morning (don't even ask ...). Surprisingly, I'm not mad at Steve for not lowering it (even if I fell in once last week - again, in the early morning), so that's something new for me. I'm not instantly blaming someone else for my unfortunate events that occur almost daily. But what's amazing to me is that I never realized how much I rely on my thumbs - that whole "opposable" thing. Even right now as I'm typing my thumb is throbbing every time I hit the space key. I have work to do - 20 of Dad's letters to transcribe for his memoir book, a chocolate rum cake to bake for Thanksgiving, maybe even a little Guitar Hero (hey, I'm up to "hard" on most songs). I think of all the jokes about animals not having opposable thumbs, and how that makes them inferior to us, and I never really thought about all of the things you need thumbs for (it was a BEARCAT to put my tight jeans on this morning). Think about it - we evolve with certain gifts and talents, and we take them for granted. So I've evolved in certain areas, and I haven't really stopped to think about any of it, but this whole black-thumbnail-it-will-probably-fall-off incident stops me in my tracks on this gray Sunday morning. I think maybe I am still moving too fast, not walking slowly enough through my days to be mindful of the toilet lid, or whatever it was that cut my OTHER thumb, or caused that bruise on my upper right thigh.

So if I'm not DEVOLVING, exactly, I'm certainly not appreciating where I am in my current state of evolution. Today is a slow day, a play day, and tomorrow is a baking and grocery shopping day. But today I'm wondering if I got the lesson right - slow down, and before you sit down, for gosh sake's, make SURE you're holding the lid tightly before you let go...