Zoom, Boom, Ow!

Anyone who knows me can attest to my lack of grace, my tendency to dash around, and the many delicate things I've broken, including bones. I don't want to brag but my orthopedist welcomes me like I'm his favorite cousin at the family reunion.

Once, when I was sweeping up the glass from a shattered peanut jar that had leaped out of my hands, my husband remarked: If I had done that I'd be so annoyed. I shrugged. If you did it as often as I do you'd get used to it.

As you know, broken glass is the gift that keeps on giving. I can find slivers of glass for months, in the weirdest places. Just don't walk barefoot in my house.

As for bones, I've broken my big toes, my pinky toes, my nose, and various fingers, but nothing that required a cast or surgery, or that garnered much sympathy. Klutzy people do klutzy things. That sliding glass door I walked into was ridiculously clean. I mean come on, would it kill you to put a sticker on it? If you can't do it for me, think of the poor birds...

But this time wasn't my fault. I wasn't running around, I wasn't careless, I was just sitting in a desk chair on a Zoom call. When I saw my phone on the bed where it might ring and disrupt the call, I leaned to my right, over the plastic chair arm, reaching, reaching, all my weight on the chair arm and boom! A piercing pain in my side. My astute reaction: this can't be good. I nursed my injury the rest of the day. Was it a ruptured gallbladder, a bruised kidney? Who can say.

The pain subsided but came roaring back five days later. A trip to the bone doc, who lit me up with x-rays again and said "you broke a rib".

That's right, I broke my rib on a Zoom call. It turns out klutzy people do klutzy things. Even when they're sitting in a chair. All I can say is Ow! Ow! Ow!