Klutz (klŭts) –noun Slang

1. a clumsy, awkward person.
2. a stupid or foolish person; blockhead.

I hope that I’m not the second definition, but surely I am the first. This trait runs through my family starting with my dad. Many a time as a kid I’d be sitting in the house and out from the garage would come the familiar bellow of my father followed by cursing. He had slammed his head into the overhanging garage door rails again and would come into the house with blood streaming from the bald spot on his head. If you went out to the garage you’d find the flesh from the top of his head hanging off the end of the rail. He would do this over and over again. To this day I still don’t know why he didn’t wrap the rail ends in some kind of a cushion to protect himself.

Not to be outdone was my sister Peggy who had a habit of walking around barefoot in the morning. The scenario would be very much like my dads. I’d be upstairs in my bedroom or some other part of the house when the morning quiet would be broken by a long, loud, lingering shriek. If you didn’t know better you’d think she had just had her finger-nails ripped off by a mad torturer. The cause of these spine chilling cries were my sister stubbing her toe on a chair in the kitchen. She did this quite often and never seemed to learn that those chairs were waiting for her.

I wish I could blame all my clumsiness on my bad eyesight. The truth is that I was a klutz long before I started going blind. The difference is that it has really picked up in frequency. Now I walk around constantly with a mass of contusions and bruises on my elbows and shins. This house is set up for Mark and his skinny ass, with the furniture arranged so that a ‘larger’ person like me can’t just walk through without my elbows bouncing off things. I smash my shins into low tables and my head into cabinet doors that Mark has left open, while he flows through the house like Loretta Young breezing through that door every week (check her out on You Tube kids).