Thursday 17 March 2011

Hey, Uncle Scar*, when I'm king, what'll that make you?

Jennie
For someone who is as clumsy as I am, I only have, like, two scars. One is from when my sister dug her nails into my arm and made me bleed. She used to do that all the time, so I'm not sure why I don't have more scars from that. The other is on my forehead, from when I was three and fell down and hit my head on the corner of the coffee table. Ow. To my credit, I'd only been walking for a couple of years so I wasn't very good at it yet. I got some stitches and a scar that I tell people I got when I fought off a lion on a train with a whip.

When I was a senior in high school, we went putt-putting and, on the last hole of the course, I decided I was going to hit my ball as hard as I could. Most people would know right away that this is a terrible, terrible idea, but I am not one of those people. So I whacked that ball as hard as possible (heh) and, wouldn't you know it? It hit a rock, ricocheted, and hit me right in the forehead, IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE AS MY FOREHEAD SCAR. At the time I thought it MEANT SOMETHING. It didn't, though. I did not get a scar that time, just a nasty bump. Here are some other times I should have gotten scars but didn't, thanks to my hard-working guardian angel.

Times I probably should have gotten scars, in chronological order:

1. I got stuck in a pool hole. I was five or six and had been EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN from playing around in the backyard of my babysitter's house, because they were putting in a pool and there was a giant hole in the ground and, I don't know, they didn't want me to get stuck down there and get buried in cement because then there'd always be this 6-year-old poltergeist hanging around their pool singing the Fraggle Rock theme song and throwing rocks into the pool water and HOW ANNOYING would that be if all you wanted to do was get a tan or whatever? Anyway, I wasn't allowed back there and had been told numerous times NOT to play around back there, so of course I played there as much as I could. Until the day I was climbing out of the pool hole and my shorts got caught on a (rusty) nail. I think I had to scream for someone to come get me and then immediately start crying once I was free so I wouldn't get in trouble.

2. I fell off of the parallel bars on the school playground and landed in the gravel on my face. ON MY FACE. No scars, though, maybe because my glasses protected me? My mom had to come to school and take me to get new glasses because the gravel I FELL FACE FIRST INTO had scratched them all to hell.

3. I fell backwards off of a Fisher-Price teeter totter (remember those orange and yellow ones?) because I stood on one end and made my friend push down really hard on the other end. My theory was that if my friend pushed down with enough force, I would go flying through the air like my childhood idol (Peter Pan), but instead I fell and hit my head on the concrete.

4. I slipped on a Slip-n-Slide and not in a good way. Here was my idea: I would run toward the Slip-n-Slide, gracefully jump onto the edge of it, and the momentum would carry me across the Slip-n-Slide like I was surfing. Here is what happened: I ran toward the Slip-n-Slide, cowabungaed onto the edge of it, slipped ass over tea kettle (I love that saying and am pretty sure I've never gotten a chance to use it before), and landed on my back, smacking my head on the ground in the process.

5. I fell backwards off of a swing. I'm still not sure how this happened but I landed on my head. Hmm, I'm sensing a theme here...

6. I was at my friend's house once and we (my friend, her brother, my sister, me) were throwing rocks at one of those electric poles. I don't know why. I'm sure we had a reason. Anyway, her brother threw a rock and it somehow whipped around (seriously, I was standing BEHIND HIM, I think he broke the laws of physics) and hit me in the forehead, right between the eyes. It didn't draw blood or anything but do you realize how close I came to losing an eye? I just measured and I came, like, A CENTIMETER CLOSE.

7. I climbed and then jumped off of a billboard. Not a very tall billboard. But, like, it was really hard to climb up? So I thought it would be really hard to climb down? And so obviously it was a much better idea to just jump. Sure.

9. I climbed a fence to go nightswimming on two different occasions. I did almost drown the one time, but escaped without any near death experiences the second time, and without scars both times, even though I have a vague recollection of Mary and I racing around the edge of the pool.

10. I slipped and fell on Lake That's What She Said. Granted, it wasn't very hard (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID) but I did scrape my hand pretty badly.

All of my other scars are emotional but even they are (mostly) my own fault.

*Get it...GET IT?

9 comments:

mysterygirl! said...

I'm dying laughing over these stories, Jennie. I've tried surfing down a Slip-n-Slide, too, with equivalent results.

Also, I'm guessing that the rock slipped out of his hand as he was winding up to throw it, but I prefer the idea that your injury defied physics.

You can call me, 'Sir' said...

Based on the airtight logic displayed in #7, I'm telling you, nay, BEGGING YOU, to never climb a mountain.

Jennie said...

mg! I'm so glad I'm not the only one who tried the Slip-n-Slide thing. What were we thinking?

Sir, I can safely say that, after 127 Hours, I will never try to climb a mountain.

eclectic said...

There's a perfectly good reason why ever since you were 3 years old, when you fall, you fall on your head... and this is it:

Your head is filled with the most remarkable brain, and because it's more powerful than most, it's also too heavy for your slight little physical self, so... when gravity calls, your head answers first. See?

Also, I just can't wait to be king!

Kiti said...

This one time, I was playing on a teeter-totter with this other girl, and she asked me to bounce her high, so I did. And she fell off and broke her arm. =( I felt bad, but on the other hand, she ASKED me to do it.

Jennie said...

Shari, I can't wait to start telling everyone that I fell down because I'm so smart. IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. Hee.

Kiti, that girl asked you to do it so it was totally her own fault.

Ashley said...

"A monkey's uncle."
"You're so weird."

Heather Anne Hogan said...

I cannot stop laughing. I love how with every single incident, you're like, "This is what happened. But this AWESOME THING is what I THOUGHT was going to happen."

Jennie said...

Ashley, I really want to watch The Lion King. Like RIGHT NOW.

h!a! I mean, that Slip-n-Slide thing seems like it should work, right?!