It was October 28, 1955. The planet Mars had just entered the sign of Libra, Venus was moving into Scorpio, and the Sun was in the Fifth House. I don’t know what any of that means. Honestly, I don’t think it means anything. All that seems to matter is that I was born one day late.
This doesn’t sound unusual or significant, I know. A lot of babies arrive after their mother’s due date. And breech births, in which the baby is turned around, occur about three percent of the time. But I arrived behind schedule and facing the wrong way (or “ass-backward,” as my mother described me to complete strangers on countless occasions). The combination appears to have produced a person who is constantly bumping into life and hitting the sharp corners with his elbows and shins. Sometimes I’m engaged in the correct activity, but my timing is off. Or my timing is good, but my sense of direction is weak. I tend to get lost a lot, which isn’t surprising when you consider that I somehow became disoriented during what should have been a straightforward trip through the birth canal.
* * * * *
On my first day of kindergarten, my mother made me take an empty schoolbag, the big beige fake leather kind with an enormous flap and a brass buckle. I cried. I didn’t even want to go to school. For one thing, I was sure everybody there was already friends with everybody else, a feeling I still get when I walk into a room full of people. For another, even at age five, I knew the schoolbag was lame. Sure enough, when I got to my classroom I was the only person carrying one, which served as a jarring introduction to the experience of being mortified. I went home that afternoon and told my mother that I didn’t need it. The next day, I was the only person in the class without a schoolbag.
Out on the sidewalks and in the playground, girls jumped rope to strange, rhythmic songs they all seemed to know by heart. They made it look easy, sometimes turning two ropes at once in opposite directions and running in and out of the jump without missing a beat. It was an amazing thing for the boys to watch, even while we pretended not to, and what kept us from taunting them about any perceived lack of athletic ability. I tried jumping rope with the girls once and ended up looking like a busted steer at the rodeo.
* * * * *
The day my driver’s license came in the mail, I was allowed to take the car and go to a friend’s house. It was my first time driving alone and I was jittery. At some point on the way, I passed a small park, and there was a man seated on a bench. I glanced over at him for just a second as I went by, and could tell that he was very old. When he saw me looking, he waved hello, but I didn’t react quickly enough. This was partly because I was focused on the other cars, but also because it was New York, and strangers only waved to you if you were driving a taxi, or selling hot dogs at a ballgame. I felt terrible that this elderly man had reached out for a moment of kindness and I’d seemed to ignore him. I drove around the block and came back up the same street, intending to get his attention so I could wave back. But when I reached the bench again, he was gone.
In college, a classmate invited me to play foosball one day. He said a few other guys would be playing, too. I assumed there would be others because I thought he had tried to say football, and that it had just come out a little funny. I did that a lot myself. But, no, he was talking about foosball. If you’re unfamiliar with this activity, as I was at the time, let me describe it. There’s a table about three feet high, and it has metal bars with handles running horizontally across the top. The bars contain rigid plastic soccer players that are evenly spaced and can be maneuvered either by sliding the rods back and forth or spinning them to effect a kick, or some combination of the two. Each team’s men reside on every other rod, so that in addition to the sliding and spinning, you also have to shift hands from one handle to another, depending on where the ball is. No one explained any of this to me. The other three guys were, I quickly ascertained, majoring in foosball, with a minor in obnoxious impatience for any novice who happened to be lured into the game through misunderstanding. I also figured out that the word foosball comes from the Greek phusbos, which means “Whatever you’re doing right now, you should have been doing that three seconds ago.”
* * * * *
This sense of being out of sync with the world is the same feeling you might have during a speaker-phone conversation, when both people start to talk at once, then both stop, then both talk again. It’s the maddening side-to-side shuffle we do when we encounter someone walking toward us and we try to get out of each other’s way. It’s the feeling we have that it’s Tuesday, when it’s actually Monday. Or the weird thing that happens when we’re walking down the stairs and we think there’s one more step, and there isn’t. When we trip over nothing, choke uncontrollably on perfectly good air, or search frantically for car keys that are jangling in our pocket. It’s what causes us to arrive at the bank five seconds too late and get stuck behind the lady who’s performing fifteen complex transactions, all involving thick file folders and rolls of nickels.
I am poised on the edge of these awkward or badly-timed moments during most of my waking hours, as well as a good part of my sleep. I frequently dream that I’m riding a tricycle on a major highway, against traffic. Or that I’m about to deliver a speech in Swedish to the UN General Assembly and I’ve forgotten to put on my shirt; I’ve also just remembered that I don’t speak Swedish.
There’s a natural rhythm to the world. Most people seem to sense it and ride the waves with little wasted energy. You can see these people cruising into the mall without breaking stride. And you can see me, slamming face-first into the automatic doors that never seem to open unless I stop dead in my tracks and wave my arms around like a fool. Sometimes I just wait for someone else to show up, and then follow them in.
I have stepped on my own hand, shot a staple into my leg (don’t do this one), and put a finger into my eye minutes after chopping hot peppers (really don’t do this one). I have closed a window onto my head and fallen through the ice into a river. I have locked myself out of my car and out of my house so frequently that I sometimes think I may need a CAT scan.
I’m still convinced that it all started back in 1955, when I showed up twenty-four hours late and a hundred and eighty degrees out of alignment. I’ve even considered staying in bed for an entire day, with my head down where my feet should be, in an attempt to reset my biological clock and re-orient my nervous system. But apparently Saturn has just moved into Capricorn, and now Mercury is in retrograde, so the timing may not be good. Plus, I’m afraid I’d fall asleep and dream about riding my tricycle through a park filled with foosball players jumping rope and old men with schoolbags waving to me from benches. And of course my mother would be there, too, telling me that even my dreams are ass-backward.
* * * * *
Here are some foosball players competing for a world championship. I do not appear in this video.
Noreen
February 18, 2011
Thanks for a bright spot today. Loved it. Especially the dancing for the doors. I have a sensor light on the porch. Sometimes all I have to do is walk out, other times I have to dance and wave for it to go on.
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bronxboy55
February 18, 2011
Thanks, Noreen. If this was a bright spot, I’m glad.
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Hippie Cahier
February 18, 2011
On one hand, I think more people struggle with feeling out of sync than you realize; on the other, I think we may have been separated at birth…only you showed up a few years earlier and in much more dramatic fashion.
I didn’t realize Mercury is retrograde again. Sigh. Assuming this comment even makes it through, thank you for the reminder. I’m off to back up my iPod.
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bronxboy55
February 18, 2011
I’m pretty sure I found out from your blog that Mercury is in retrograde. (I’m not sure how long that phase lasts.) But the comment arrived intact, so thank you for that, Hippie. And good luck with your iPod.
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mirroredImages
February 18, 2011
You were a trend-setter in kindergarten and didn’t even know it! Did kids stop bringing bookbags once they saw you show up without one?
The whole speaker phone bit is perfectly written, and all too familiar to me as someone who conducts a lot of interviews over the phone. There’s a lot of nervous twittering, a lot of “Excuse me?” and a lot of awkward fits and starts, rather like two Christians arriving simultaneously at a four-way stop. No, you go. No, YOU go. Or wrestling to see who’s going to hold open the door for whom when two people meet at an entrance/exit.
I think you are too hard on yourself here, as always. I really can’t see you smashed up against sliding glass doors. No one looks graceful playing Foosball. And I think everyone has gruesome nightmares about being caught somewhere under-dressed and even more under-prepared, tho perhaps not at the UN and required to speak in a totally foreign language.
You’re human like the rest of us. Funny, flawed, ungainly at times, but perfectly human. Even if you were born a day late and a dollar short.
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bronxboy55
February 18, 2011
Thanks for sticking up for me, Julia. There was a time when I would’ve run screaming from anyone calling me “perfectly human,” but I’m kind of getting used to the idea.
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Marie M
February 18, 2011
Thanks, BronxBoy. I never thought that the boys of my childhood might be envying the girls their rope-jumping athleticism–an interesting idea, that. Loved the cartoon.
Have you ever considered how being out of sync has been a blessing or has benefit? Reminds me of a “good luck-bad luck” story set in China that I heard years ago. (I’m afraid I don’t know how to find it if you’re not familiar with it.)
For example: What if the elderly man in the park wasn’t waving hello, but was trying to call your attention to a driving hazard? Apparently he did this quite successfully, as you neatly navigated your path without incident. I imagine he wasn’t still there on your next pass because he’d done his good deed for the day and gone home to a nice nap. Just a thought . . . .
PS: Do you thnk you and Ziggy are related?
PPS: I couldn’t believe that video clip was 10 minutes long! Who knew??
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
I’ve only recently gotten better at recognizing these things as blessings and benefits. Most of what we see as human flaws can have a positive and a negative side, and it’s hard to get rid of one side without also getting rid of the other. I like your version of the man in the park story better. (I wish I could tell you exactly where that happened; it was somewhere in Rockland.)
I don’t know if Ziggy and I are related. But now that you mention it, I hope so.
Confession: I still haven’t watched that entire video. I hope there’s nothing objectionable in the second half.
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heidit
February 18, 2011
Wonderful post, Charles. The good news is that I don’t think you’re the only one who feels out of sync. My guess is that more people feel out of sync than actually feel in sync. It reminds me of a saying my grandma used to use (or was it my mom?) “A day late and a dollar short.” I’ve often felt this way. Thanks for the smiles.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Heidi, you’re already the second person to use that quote, so I think it’s time to mention something that I deleted from the original post. Bill Gates was born on the very same day: October 28, 1955. His net worth is somewhere between fifty and a hundred billion dollars. So he and I arrived under the same planetary alignment, yet I find myself a dollar short. If that isn’t an argument against astrology, I don’t know what is. (I wasn’t aware that he and I shared the same birth date until I did a little research for the post. But I’ve said on several occasions, when discussing my business-building abilities, that if I’d been the founder of Microsoft I’d still be working in my garage.)
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Margaret Reyes Dempsey
February 18, 2011
Wow, you need help. This post made me roar…and choke on my own spit, which isn’t hard for me to do and only slightly less pathetic than choking on air. Someone should have told the man on the bench that he shouldn’t be out after a frontal lobotomy until the rest of his skull grows back. Jeez, I think that bird was scoping out a new roost.
This post was the bright spot in a twilight zone-like day. Thanks for the laugh.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
No, actually I think choking on your own spit is more pathetic. (Does this qualify as a philosophical conversation?)
Your book arrived yesterday! I’m going to start reading it this weekend.
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Margaret Reyes Dempsey
February 19, 2011
I think it does qualify as a philosophical conversation.
Yay, the book arrived. Finally. Hope you like it.
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dearrosie
February 18, 2011
You did it again – we’re all laughing (see above if you don’t believe me) – and I must add that I LOVE your cartoons.
My son was born feet first. What does that make him, in a hurry to get going? I read somewhere that more males than females are C-section breech births. What does that tell us? That even in the womb boys dont know up from down, back from front..? So of course they can’t jump rope with the girls, and btw, thanks for reminding us of that. Oh boy I spent HOURS jumping rope with my friends, sometimes two ropes and two girls skipping at a time.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
You might be onto something there, Rosie. Most famous explorers were male; maybe they were all really lost and eventually just bumped into something.
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Lisa Campo Miklos
February 18, 2011
I truly love your work. You are often a huge bright spot in an average day. I am so glad that Jackie posts links to your writings. Keep ’em coming.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Lisa! It’s great to hear from you! I had no idea you were reading this.
Thank you.
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Val Erde
February 18, 2011
Great post, Charles and yeah, I know these scenarios. I’m the most accident prone person I know and I wasn’t even a breech-birth! I walk into walls and cupboards, I trip over stairs that aren’t there (frequently), I lose my balance just turning around. I have weird moments when I can decide on something and I physically turn this way and that. You’re not alone. Not by a long chalk. (Though I did like my school satchel. And I have played table football – I was pretty crap at it.)
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Val, I had a feeling we were in the same boat. (Which one of us is going to fall overboard first?
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Jessica Sieghart
February 18, 2011
I locked myself out of the car just yesterday! I often blame my bad luck (lost debit cards, bent keys and general clumsiness) on Murphy and his laws, but the truth is…I’m distracted in other thoughts. I tend to notice things others don’t and I get caught up in my own thoughts, worries and daydreams and get caught not paying attention. I would bet that this is also true of you, Charles, especially since you remember driving past a stranger and not waving back. Those things stick with me, too. I like to call it absent-minded genius. Good enough for Einstein, good enough for me. My husband loves foosball. I can’t play it. It’s so darn noisy and it makes me nervous because I can’t get the whole hand/eye thing right. Not my kind of game. Now, poker on the other hand…way more my kind of game!
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to noticing things, but I like your description of absent-minded genius. I may even try using that one myself sometime (but when you say it, how do you avoid noticing the eye-rolling and loud laughter?)
For anyone who doesn’t know, one of Jessica’s recent posts was a contest winner! http://jessicasieghart.com/2011/02/kelly-bundy-brain-2/
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notesfromrumbleycottage
February 18, 2011
I think I know how you feel, being that I am a life long klutz who will find the only raised part of the sidewalk that everyone else misses.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
I find it, too. After you trip, do you turn around to look at it, even though there’s nothing there?
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Melinda
February 18, 2011
Wonderful stories. Too bad at age 5 you don’t have the confidence of pulling that bookbag off as a cool retro look. It’s all in the attitude. Automatic soap dispensers, faucets, and hand dryers never work for me in bathrooms. I usually leave wiping soap in my shirt, too exhausted from that accomplishment to face the next two hurdles.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
I have the same experiences with faucets and hand dryers, and always feel as though I’m trying to perform some kind of magic trick. No one else ever seems to be having a problem; some of them even appear to be amused by my struggles. I did not have the attitude when I was five. If I went back to kindergarten now, though, I’d definitely be cool. And the tallest kid in the class.
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souldipper
February 18, 2011
Wow – a schoolbag? You were hot stuff, Charles. I would have been mortified because I didn’t have one. Too bad we weren’t told that what we felt was the same as what 90% of the other kids felt. Good grief, we could have concentrated on learning. 🙂
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
I’m not sure what we put into those schoolbags, Amy. I don’t remember doing anything in kindergarten except play with trucks and color big squares and rectangles. And fire drills. I remember the fire drills.
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jesswords10
February 18, 2011
Thank you for making me smile today. What a well written collection of memories and very humorous! Did I tell you that you need to read “A Girl Named Zippy” by Haven Kimmel? You’ll love her style judging from your own wonderful memoirs. I did wince at the staple in your leg, I did that to my thumb (really don’t do that). lol.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
You did mention the Kimmel book, Jess, and I’m going to look for it. I think a staple inserted into pretty much any body part would have to hurt.
Thanks for your kind words.
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shoreacres
February 19, 2011
Now you have me thinking. If late-and-breech could do that to you, perhaps high-noon-and-the-doc’s-gone-to-the-hotel-for-lunch-with-the-Rotary-crowd could explain a few things I’ve never understood about my own life. I’ll have to think about that.
I can tell you this – the guy on the bench wasn’t a New Yorker. He was a transplanted country boy who hadn’t broken the habit of the “pickup wave” – two fingers lifted off the steering wheel just as you make eye contact with the driver heading toward you. He’d just adapted it for the city. It’s not really meant for freeways, but for farm to market roads, secondary highways that support fleets of combines and pickups, and so on.
Come to think of it, it’s not meant for Houston, either. In too many places they’d confuse a wave with a gang sign. 😉
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
And now you have me wondering: Did the doctor make it back in time for the delivery? Or will that possibly be a post on your blog in the near future? (I think I’d prefer that.)
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Allison
February 19, 2011
It’s true, I think there are more people who feel this way than you think. I feel like I spend way too much time waving my hands in front of those water sensors trying to get the water to turn on. Washing your hands shouldn’t be so difficult! I also seem to always get to a door just as it’s closing and arrive at lights just as they are turning red. And I have a horrible problem of thinking that someone is making eye contact with me and waving, and then when I wave back, I realize that it’s not me they’re looking at. Then I have to awkwardly just pretend I was stretching or waving at someone else. So just know that you are not alone!
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
I don’t know where you could have picked up (or inherited) such odd quirks.
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Allison
February 19, 2011
I’m not sure either. But thank you for reminding me that I’m not alone in feeling like an awkward fool at least once or twice a day.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Well, you still have a lot of catching up to do, Al. I feel like an awkward fool at least once or twice before breakfast.
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Kevin Glew
February 19, 2011
I feel the same way, Charles. Out of sync with the world most of the time. Most days I can laugh at this, others are frustrating. And for the record, I once bumped into a glass door at a rest station on I-75 and shattered the glass. People were telling each after that I walked through the glass door. Not the case, but the story was more exciting that way. Thanks for the great article. We can commiserate by
e-mail sometime 🙂
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Maybe everybody is out of sync., and there’s no such thing as feeling in sync with the world. I’m like you, Kevin; some days it seems funny and other days it just doesn’t. We can also commiserate on Facebook (assuming we can both remember our passwords).
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Snoring Dog Studio
February 19, 2011
Wonderful. If I could click on that “You like this” button a million times, I would. I can’t figure out why you’re not putting your amazing posts in a book. You have a gift, Charles. I don’t care how clumsy, awkward, out of sync you are. The world needs more people like you in it who can make us laugh at our differences – instead of hurting people over them. Thank you for this post.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Thank you, SDS, for saying such nice things. I certainly agree with you about the hurting part. There’s way too much of that.
By the way, I loved your recent post honoring your Dad’s 90th birthday:
http://snoringdogstudio.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/happy-90th-birthday-dad/
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Priya
February 19, 2011
And if I could like Snoring Dog Studio’s comment a million times, I would, Charles.
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bronxboy55
February 19, 2011
Thank you, Priya. I wasn’t expecting that. (I would’ve been happy with just a gold star.)
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TexasTrailerParkTrash
February 19, 2011
My mother has said that giving birth to me was “like falling off a log.” Is that why I’ve always had a fear of heights….and termites?
Love this post, Charles. If you had been in my kindergarten class with that schoolbag, I would have shared my graham crackers and milk with you for sure.
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bronxboy55
February 20, 2011
Thanks, TTPT. I would’ve been happy to join you.
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Mitch Mitchell
February 19, 2011
That’s an interesting and funny perspective of being out of sync. Some I can identify with,a nd some I can’t, I must admit. For instance, I was the “only” so many times in school; sometimes it was a good thing, sometimes it was a bad thing. I was happy that it didn’t overly matter to me what anyone else thought; such is the life of an independent only child.
Ah yes, the infamous foosball! In all my years I found one person I could beat, and that was shameful because I kept playing and kept trying to get better, but to no avail. Not like air hockey; I could bang that puppy with the best of them.
And yes, New Yorkers don’t say hello to each other. My wife went down with friends from Alabama, and the guy said hello to everyone that passed by until my wife told him to stop. That’ll get you killed or taken advantage of, no matter the borough. lol Great stuff my man.
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bronxboy55
February 20, 2011
Mitch, I think foosball is one of those activities that anyone could get good at, with enough practice. It’s also one of those things that, if you play it once a year, you’re going to look ridiculous. Maybe visiting New York from Alabama is similar in a way.
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Mitch Mitchell
February 21, 2011
Heck, I even made one of those classic mistakes once of wearing a NYC t-shirt in Manhattan, a major no-no because everyone then knows you’re a tourist.
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arborfamiliae
February 19, 2011
Great post, Charles. I find myself to be five or ten degrees out of alignment most of the time. I don’t tend to run into glass doors or feel totally out of place. I just feel a little off-center. As if I could have said something slightly more fitting or more appropriate in social situations. Or like when you’re saying goodbye to someone and you’re not sure whether to reach out for a hug, grab a hand for a hand shake or just walk away. You choose one, the person walks away seemingly satisfied and then you think “Did I choose the right one? Was he expecting something more? something less? something different?”
It’s actually more painful than being 180 degrees off, in my opinion. It’s just that nagging sense at the periphery of your vision that something’s not right.
I firmly believe we all feel some degree of misalignment in life. Some of us just hide it better than others.
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bronxboy55
February 20, 2011
It’s so interesting how many of these odd little things we all seem to have in common, and how easy it is to admit it once the ball gets rolling. Thanks for your comments, Kevin; they’re always thoughtful and thought-provoking.
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writerwoman61
February 19, 2011
Fun post, Charles…I was laughing with you…
I think a lot of us blogging types are a bit “off”, which I consider to be a good thing!
Here’s my most “talented” mishap to date: We’d had a bad freezing rain storm, and I had decided to take a cab to work instead of public transit…I always dropped off my two younger daughters off at day care on the way. Cabs were running late that day because of the weather…it didn’t arrive at my house until 8:30, the time I was supposed to start work! I came flying out of the house with the kids, threw the four-year-old into the back seat of the cab, and slammed the door. Unfortunately, my finger was in the door, and I had my seven-month-old baby in the other arm. There wasn’t a thing I could do except scream until the cab driver clued in, turned around in his seat, and opened the door to free my finger (which was now bleeding profusely). I told him I was fine, and jumped in the car. The girls at the day care cleaned up my finger, and gave me bandaids. They also washed my daughter’s snowsuit, which was pretty bloody. I arrived at work about an hour late, but I made it!
My mom was the Queen of the Klutzes…among other incidents, she found the only tree in the middle of our field with a toboggan…
Thanks for the giggles!
Wendy
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bronxboy55
February 20, 2011
I bet at the time it was hard to see the humor in that situation. At least the cab driver didn’t start to drive away.
The toboggan story doesn’t surprise me. My older brother totaled our mother’s car one day by doing the very same thing. The policeman told us that it happens all the time, because we focus our eyes on the thing we want most to avoid, then head straight for it. Actually, that explains a lot more than slamming into trees, doesn’t it?
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Amiable Amiable
February 21, 2011
And another coincidence. I was also breech. But I was early, as in premature. Please don’t make cracks about my brain not being fully developed. My brother, on the other hand, was late. My mother, who never said much, did say about my brother, “You were born late and you’ve been late every since.” This is true about my brother. As for me, I am never early for anything. So, I don’t know if there’s anything to being born late or early. I see some inconsistencies.
Like Wendy, I am laughing with you, not at you … having recently walked through a screen door. I love that you drove around the block to wave at the old man. Had I done that, I would have gotten into an accident – as I fear being out of sync, I also fear being in a situation that could have been avoided and, therefore, puts a jinx on me.
Like Snoring Dog Studio, I agree that your posts should be in a book, Charles!
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bronxboy55
February 21, 2011
Maybe we should start a club, AA. We could call it the Breech Babies, and the only rule would be that any awkward or dumb behavior is perfectly acceptable. And as for the inconsistencies, those are to be expected; I think consistency is just weird.
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mybusinessaddiction
February 21, 2011
Very well written! And I also think your posts should be in a book, maybe like a blog-book. Check out http://www.blurb.com. You can make your own very cool book here and sell it.
ps. I also fall out of sync sometimes. Especially on those darn teleconferences :).
K
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bronxboy55
February 21, 2011
“I also fall out of sync sometimes. Especially on those darn teleconferences.”
Not to mention the stairs. But maybe I wasn’t supposed to mention them. I wasn’t, was I? So I won’t. (Feeling out of sync again.)
Thanks, K. I’m going to check out that site.
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Damyanti
February 22, 2011
ROTFL
Thanks for this. Really needed it today.
On a side note, I have broken my nose by walking into a closed door, the shutter kind, not the auto-opening kind. I simply thought the door was open.
If I start off, I’m sure I’ll have a post longer than yours of all the things I’ve fumbled up, broken, mis-timed, dropped, forgotten..well, you get the drift.
What I’m not sure of is if I can have your self-deprecating humor, and panache (did I spell that right?) and write such an absolutely hilarious blog post! Love, love, love your blog!
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bronxboy55
February 23, 2011
Thank you, Damyanti. It’s nice to know a fellow klutz (did I spell that right?). And I certainly feel the same way about your blog.
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Allan Douglas
February 22, 2011
I have to agree with Heidi (not that this is a chore or anything) in that you are not entirely alone in this out-of-sync-ness. Not that *I*’ve ever experienced any of those things… but I’ve read about some folks who have.
Yeah, I know… I’m a terrible liar.
I have a theory about the old gent on the bench. He was actually you from 70 years in the future, and a hiccup in the time and space momentarily placed the two of you in the same time and place and he waved because you looked familiar – much like he did as a boy. By the time you came around the block the temporary glitch had sorted itself out and he was back in his own time.
OK, maybe not.
Still, I enjoyed these tales of tail-firstness. Thanks!
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bronxboy55
February 23, 2011
The time-space hiccup is interesting, Allan. But if that were really me transported from the future, I should have remembered the guilt feelings my younger self had for not waving; my older version would have waited a few more minutes, knowing I’d be back. Unless we’re totally at the mercy of hiccups and glitches, which sometimes does seem to be the case, doesn’t it?
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carldagostino
March 5, 2011
You are very talented writing in this genre. You have that Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor touch. You are not alone in feeling backward. I got the geography award in the ninth grade(and a a stupid brief case too which mother could not understand was worse than wearing dirty underwear on your head) and today I don’t go downtown Miami any more because I get lost there and then can’t find my way home. I have more success with the history award I got in the eight grade because I remember when I was born(most of the time) and how many hairs President Eisenhower had on his head. I also own a TV remote that has legs because it is never where I last put it.
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bronxboy55
March 5, 2011
I lived in Boston for a while and several times had to stop and get directions to my own apartment. Any shopping mall whose shape is more complicated than a rectangle is a labyrinth to me. I guess we have to comfort ourselves with other successes — such as your fine memory, or the fact that I know how to spell labyrinth. Thanks, Carl.
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charlywalker
March 6, 2011
I think your arriving “feet first” has you planted firmly on the ground..everyone else landed on their little pointy heads….hopefully assisted by sterile forceps….
spread the humor: charlywalker.wordpress.com
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bronxboy55
March 6, 2011
What a perfect perspective you have. Why have I never thought of that?
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