Will I Ever Learn?

If you could make a clip show of my entire life, but just of me falling down and banging into things it would probably be hours long. My childhood was covered in bruises, scrapes, jammed toes, a broken arm, a broken tooth, etc etc. My parents tell me that I always had two speeds, full blast and full stop. And it’s within that full blast time that I found myself banging into things, like the things were getting in my way of my moving. Not that I’m clumsy, but rather I’m just too fast for this world. Maybe I’m an alien and where I come from I’m like normal speed.

So this is what I looked like for awhile when I was a kid:

Photo taken by Bo Nepip

Cute right? But notice my snaggle tooth. When I was …well I don’t know how old…one and a halfish…three…I have no idea….but the point is I was little, I was on one of those toys that you sit on and push yourself with your feet. Apparently I hit a curb, the toy and me went over and I decided to hold on and met the concrete with my tooth and broke it. At the time the dentist wasn’t sure if I had done permananet damage to the nerve, aka would ever get a permanant tooth. But it did eventually come in and so I’ve had some nice front teeth since then.

Now, I have bad back teeth, I like candy, my teeth are weak, I have a bad bite which leads to discussions of crowns every time I am at the dentist. And I always laugh and say well at least I have my front teeth.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to go running which isn’t odd. I decided to go in the afternoon rather than evening because I was frustrated at many many things and running can calm me down, and I’ll think of new options for the frustrating things. I decided to run fast because I like running fast. I decided that I just HAD to finish in front of my apartment instead of two houses down at the corner.

So I’m coming in, listening to One by Metallica, foot over foot over foot…oh wait…no feet are on the ground, there is the concrete, that’s my face hitting it…oooh that’s not going to be good, hand up to face, broken tooth in hand.

I ran the next few houses home, blew into my apartment in hysterics, my Dad was here and I gave him quite the shock, I woke the baby up and scared her. I broke the same tooth, in the same way as when I was little. No picture because I went straight to the dentist (and I’m not kidding as I’m walking there, I slip on the same godamn piece of ice landing on my ass…what the fuck is wrong with me?), and he filled in the broken part doing a nice job and you can’t tell looking at it at that I broke it.It’s a good thing that I did go running in the afternoon because if it had been at night the dentist would have been closed and I would have had an evening with snaggle tooth. Although who knows if I would have slipped at night. Maybe not. Anyways, nothing I can do about it.

So fine, this isn’t the end of the world. I amazingly didn’t hurt anything else except a slightly scrapped up knee (which didn’t even rip my tights so it wasn’t that bad). But I’m frustrated because after 30 years of falls and bumps and bruises and scrapes and broken things, you would think that I would learn to just slow it down a bit. Like if it’s really icy and snowy out, maybe you don’t sprint the end of a run especially rounding corners. I like to think that I’ll take it easier now, but I know that I probably won’t. I’ll always be two speeds Leah and I just hope that in the future, my high speed doesn’t break anything else on me.

No running today and I think that all the adrenaline from yesterday made me a little sick last night…or I got what Jason had as when I fed the baby at 1amish this morning I thought I was going to vomit on her head. I think option a because I’m not that sick right now. Just need more coffee and some breakfast.