October 2, 2012

Crash & Burn

Just popping in to tell an embarrassing story, hopefully to brighten up your Tuesday (because it's always better to laugh at someone else than ourselves, right?).
I'm clumsy. I always have been, and if you spend five minutes with me you'll notice simply by the fact that I spill EVERYTHING on my pants and trip over my big clumsy feet all the time. 
I'm all sorts of accident prone, and lack any type of grace when it comes to how my body functions. I thought that it would get better with age, that maybe at some point I would have control over this forsaken curse, but this weekend proved to me that my clumsiness is here to stay.

On Friday I had the opportunity to help my boss work on an event she put together for her husband. We spent all day in work mode going at warp-speed. I loved it. I love where I work and who I work for, and it's incredibly satisfying to see an event put together and dust your shoulders off at a job well done. 
But needless to say, when I left work at 7:30 on Friday, I was exhausted. Ali (my BFF and partner in crime) and I had plans to make low-cal pumpkin cookies and watch Hocus Pocus (jumping the gun on October and totally okay with it), so I decided to stop at Kneader's to grab dinner on my way to her house.
Let me preface this story by saying that I am a total brat. I'll fully admit it. I made an extra effort to look put together on Friday because I knew my boss had company in town, and I think it's just as important for the people behind the scenes to look as nice as the event-attendees. 
So I actually styled my hair (usually it's a big curly mess), put on a charcoal grey tee, my favorite skinny jeans, and patent leather pointy-toed flats to dress up my casual outfit. I even put eyeliner on my upper eye-lids people. Needless to say, I walked into Kneader's (of all places) feeling like hot stuff, just casually picking up dinner as an independent woman after a professional work day. I'm telling you, such a brat. 
I ordered my food like I was in a hurry to get to an important event like some cocktail party or hipster concert instead of curling up on the couch gorging myself with cookies. Naturally.
Upon receiving my food, I was still feeling pretty confident, so I decided to strut my stuff on the walk out the door, because I liked the click-clacking that my shoes made when I walked.
So I strutted, and I strutted some more right past a couple on a date and a family with four kids (neither of whom even noticed I existed which DUH WHAT WAS I THINKING OBVIOUSLY), until 
BAM.
I have NO idea what happened but all of a sudden I was like on the tile floor of Kneader's. Apparently (after further investigating the scene after my shock wore off), whoever mopped the floor last had pushed all the dirty mop water under the welcome rug. My slippery click-clacking shoes stepped right on the edge of the carpet, which easily sent me flying INTO THE GARBAGE CAN. My forearm and shin smacked into the garbage, making a sound like a gunshot, and down I went into a pile of dirty mop water. Let's not forget that my salad went flying everywhere. 
I sat there for a few minutes thinking to myself, "this is not happening, please let this not be happening."
I looked around and to my horror saw that NOW the couple of the date and the massive family was staring at me. Completely silent, staring at me on the floor with salad piled on top of me. Did one person offer to help me up? Offer to pick up my salad? Open the door for me as I stumbled out? Nope. That's right not one person. So I clumsily stood up, grabbed what was left of my salad and walked out to my car.

I didn't understand how much falling actually hurt (not just my ego) until I got into my car and burst into tears.
I drove over to Ali's, and by the time I got there, I was sobbing on her doorstep. She thought someone had robbed me or I had gotten into an accident and I literally couldn't tell her what happened because I was such a dang hot mess.
So needless to say, I need to stop falling. Falling into garbage cans, falling down stairs with my sewing machine, and falling for the illusion that I can stop falling.

Some battle wounds (just to gross everyone out as if I wasn't embarrassing enough):

 

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah! Oh my goodness! That's way embarrassing. Not sure if this will make you feel any better or not. However, when I was an EFY counselor one of my girls had to be picked up early on Thursday (Sunday dress attire). I safely delivered her to her dad and was hustling to make it back to the dorm and decided to take a shortcut through a slight construction area.

Basically somehow clumsy me tripped on a forklift (How do you miss that?!), did some crazy move which showed my underside and found myself on the ground. Little did I know my girl and her dad saw the whole thing. (Talk about losing your air of professionalism.) Turns out I sprained my ankle and her dad had to carry me to the health counselors. I pray I never see either of them ever again!

Jillian said...

Let me tell you girl... I have done this so many times. The other day I was walking down the sidewalk at an event in heels carrying a super heavy box alone (only because I refused help from three guys assuring them i could handle it alone.) I tripped OUT of my shoes and hit the pavement with the contents of the box spilling everywhere... so embarrassing.

Autumn @ Autumn All Along said...

Ouch! Not only is that embarrassing, but it sounds like it hurt so much.

I've never had anything quite like that. My extent of embarrassing stories is walking into the men's restroom and then running out when I realized what I had done.