The gash on the philtrum was the
last straw. The cut was the result of a typically quick, jerky turn I made a
moment earlier to avoid locking eyes with the un-announced visitor at the front
door on this peaceful Sunday afternoon.
Splat! Next, a shooting pain.
Reflexively my hand reached for the philtrum, that narrow gutter between the
lip and the nose, the spot that hit the wall corner in the hallway as I turned
around to hide from the stranger. I felt something wet perched precariously on
my upper lip. It was blood. My left cheekbone area too throbbed. I felt stupid.
I ran to the bathroom mirror and checked the cut and the reddened cheekbone
area. The cut was bleeding still. I asked my husband to get me an ice pack. My
usual impatience wondered why he was taking so long. Unlike me, he never did
anything in a hurry. Often, I had wondered if I did things fast to make up for
his slowness. Not that my speed has ever got me anywhere faster, that is, if at
all I make it to my destination. Because of my tendency to speed, on any
occasion, though, the two of us might begin our walk or stroll together, within
the next few minutes, I am usually, a, few steps ahead of him and the distance
only increases.
I don’t
know at what point in my life I began to skip, hop and jump. I also used to
speak too fast. Then at some point, I noticed that important people took their
time in delivering their thoughts. So I too began to speak more deliberately
but with respect to movements, whether I walked or just used my hands, I tended
to move faster than I really had to, my mind feeling stressed out as well. My
hands may be focused on the present activity but my mind had already traveled
mile a minute to the next several tasks at hand. My poor hand trying to keep up
with my lunatic mind would invariably drop the object in its possession, or
spill something, or tear, or crack or break. You name it and I’d have done it
at least once. Sometimes I would step on my own toes. When it comes to eating,
though, I am very slow.
Another person who always was in
the express lane was my late maternal uncle Neelu. A bright and successful man,
once, he stepped on my right eye while, as a seven-year-old, I slept on a futon
on the floor in his bedroom. It was the middle of the night, pitch dark, and
suddenly I felt a heel grind into my eye socket. So being a close relative of
this literally cross-eyed uncoordinated man, I assumed that I had inherited his
genes and so that was that. This tendency on my part to drop, spill, crack,
break, and so on also made me over caution others. I constantly issue warnings:
Be careful. Don’t leave the cup on the edge. Don’t walk around bare feet even
inside the house. Many more such dictums constantly emanate from my lips. The
best one is, don’t hold the knife pointing out unless you plan to stab someone.
Of course, this last one is sane advice and there are people who hold the knife
the wrong way. Common sense really is not so common.
Anyway, that Sunday, it was a
peaceful afternoon. I had just finished listening to the selected shorts on
NPR. Sunday afternoons is often guilt free for me, especially if I have caught
up on most of my New York Times reading and the house is clean. I felt like
napping a bit and just as my head hit the pillow, I heard my malfunctioning
doorbell let out a feeble ring and instantly, I jumped out of bed thinking it
was possibly John, our next door neighbor who sometimes shows up at the door
unannounced. As I reached the top of the staircase that led down to the door,
through the glass transom above it, I saw a young African-American man I didn’t
recognize. So, before this stranger could spot me I tried to make a beeline for
my bedroom. However, when I swung around, what met my face was the metal
reinforced wall corner.
Just as I began to feel alone in
this world for not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time like most
of the world could, out of the blue, I came across a report on TV. According to
research, by slowing down by just 1/10th of a second, one could
avoid many accidents, and that, one/third of the population was klutzy like I.
Now I use an extra 1/10th
second to complete every movement of mine and not surprisingly all my parts are
intact.
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