Clumsiness is hazardous!

Clumsiness is a hazardous trait. Today, I kicked over the kids’ potty several times. And, what is worse, I always put it in the same place. Therefore, I must have a wiring problem inside my brain or spaces where there should be cells. Either way, my clumsiness gets right up my hooter.

Unfortunately, I am someone who regularly walks into door frames (in my own house aswell as other people’s). Also (I have never openly admitted this) I utter a silent prayer whenever I manage to park my car straight. And clumsiness is genetic so I may aswell prepare myself for major breakages over the next 18 years because as my twin daughters grow up, it’s going to be a ‘smashing’ ride. (sorry!) In fact, I have a great deal in store knowing what my own mother had to put up with…

It is no wonder that my mum used Blue-tac to stick her Wedgewood ornaments down to the table: there’s only a certain number of breakages a mother can take. It was only five years ago when I discussed with friends what our childhood homes were like that I realised that my mother ‘Blue-tacking’ her ornaments to the table wasn’t the ‘norm’.

Plus, when I first drove my husband home after our first date, he counted that I mounted the curb three times. I said I was excited to meet an interesting man; he said my driving made him a quietly terrified man. Anyhow, the ‘terrified man’ became my husband and has learnt to deal with my lack of spatial awareness.

It is just as well.

In our first year together, we had to replace all of our glasses because I had a habit of putting down a glass of water on to the floor and then accidentally kicking it across the room moments later. The most daft moment that I can recall (apart from getting my skirt caught in my knickers and then walking down a school corridor) was when we were at a wedding and I tipped the bride’s glass of wine all over my face. She asked, ‘Kathryn, hold my glass while I have my pictures taken.’ So I dutifully took her full glass of wine whilst also holding, in the same hand, my own half empty glass. Moments later, feeling the need to ‘wet the wine whistle’, I held my hand up high (holding both glasses) and tipped my remaining wine down the hatchet whilst also tipping a full glass of the bride’s wine all over my face. The bride returned and rolled her eyes, ‘Kathryn, only YOU could do that!’

However, it is my husband who suffers most when we go out.

Often when we go shopping I am not keeping a close enough eye on the toddler twin whose hand I am holding. ‘Did you see that?’ my husband cried, once, as we walked out of Clintons, ‘she almost picked up that plate!’
‘No, I didn’t see it,’ I replied, ‘I had to apologise to that woman because I chaffed her cheek with our rucksack!’ to which he rolled his eyes and probably wondered whether he could Blue-tac both his wife’s and daughter’s hands together.

I think he would, if he could.