Once more, with feeling

My attraction to unglamorous freak accidents continues:

- 1987: I literally ran into a Mercedes on the way to church. My loose tooth broke free at this moment, and resulting blood on my t-shirt caused a minor panic among the small crowd, who gather closered and deprived me of precious oxygen while I'm lying on the gorund. Merc driver, on the other hand, wanted to sue me for damages to his car, but relented when my neighbour (who just so happened to be his friend) stepped in. Divine intervention, I tell you.

- 1993: Chinese New Year Eve. Doing chin-ups after booking out from the army was already a daft thing, but to compound it, the paint on the door frame my chin-up bar was attached to started peeling off, so it fell and took me with it, knees first. For some reason my grandfather found it quite amusing, while my mother's reaction was quite the opposite. But pain or no pain, we dutifully had our reunion dinner first (customs can't be broken, you know!) before going to the hospital. Till this day I can't kneel properly.

- 2000: Visiting my uncle, I managed to cut my toe right under the nail on one of the door entrance tiles. Further inspection failed to uncover the offending sharp edge, but my toe was bleeding quite profusely anyhow. I had just joined my present company, where a business shirt and tie are mandatory, so it was extra silly to visit cusotmers wearing sandals while my bandaged toe healed.

- 2004 (or was it early this year?): While rummaging through the storeroom in the dark - again not the smartest thing to do - I heard something drop and experienced a sharp pain in my toe (thankfully not the same toe as the last episode). It turned out to be a rubber mallet that fell, and my toe decided to turn the same colour as the mallet in retribution. Although the pain continued for some time, it healed surprisingly quickly, even as the toenail expectedly came off. I derived a strange pleasure watching it grow back to its original length after that.

- Yesterday: You would think by now that I've stopped doing dumb things. We took the children to the playground in the evening, and like a real hero I have to start swinging on one of the mini monkey bars. I say 'mini' only in hindsight, because now I know that there isn't enough clearance between bar and platform for my swinging body to fit through, knees bent or not. And so I end up slamming the platform with my left shin, right under the knee. I don't think anything's seriously wrong, but I can't put pressure on my left leg for extended periods now. Ah, it will get better...

I am such a klutz.