I have a
remarkable ability. In any other day and age it would be called a
superpower. It is called being a klutz, the state of having too much
range of motion.
I have for a long
time advocated for an occupational name to be given to persons like
myself. You might call it klutzery. Whatever the word might be, it
can be said that I am the master of it, and few tales illustrate this
so well as the tale of how I broke my glasses.
I have told it
many times; because for the longest time I had my right lens slipping
out every few minutes, and a plastic wire hanging down to my cheek
like a thick strand of a spiderweb or an enormously thick piece of
white hair. The plastic wire is what originally kept the lens in,
and with that gone it fell out quite frequently. (Now I see through
a maze of scratches on my lens, and sometimes I think it is a miracle
that I can see anything at all.)
Alas, now my lens
is fixed, and I no longer have an anecdote ready every time a new
person noticed my broken glasses (or happened to see the lens fall to
the ground). For fear that my absent mind will eventually forget
this tale, I will relate it to you now exactly as it happened.
The first time I
told this story, I started out in this way. They asked, “How did
you break your glasses?”
My eloquent and
deeply moving reply was, “Well, I put too much soap on my leg.”
They laughed at this; and it took me a moment to realize that the
logical connection, which was clear in my mind, was not quite as
clear in theirs.
The truth of the
matter is, it was because I
had too much soap on my leg; or at least too much soap in the
bathtub. I was taking a shower, you see. (For some reason, I always
have to clarify at this point that I was NOT wearing my glasses in
the shower. They were folded innocently on the left side of the
bathroom sink, where they sit every time I take a shower.)
While
I was taking a shower, I shifted my weight in some way or another,
and ended up slipping. It was a fantastic fall; it was about as
close to an art as accidents can come. My feet flew out from under
me as if they had on the winged shoes of Hermes; my arms danced
wildly from side to side, and I landed badly on my lower back with
a terrific thump.
My
right foot, propelled by this
fall, slipped upwards and smashed into the bath faucet. The shower
hose broke under this pressure, and flipped back towards the bathroom
sink. It knocked against my glasses; my glasses trembled at this
onslaught, and fell to the floor where the string broke asunder.
It
took me some time to wash off
the soap and blood (it looked
quite alarming, but the gash in my toe was minor and healed up after
several days), and afterward I picked up the pieces of my glasses and
went on to be the comic relief of the missionary community for the
next three weeks.
Although this makes an excellent story, there are nevertheless some
deep lessons to be learned from this. The most obvious is that
squinting like a pirate when only half your vision is corrected is an
acceptable exchange for being the source of laughter.
However,
the deepest lesson is more subtle. It is that, as a klutz, I have a
greater appreciation for normal motion than a normal person does.
The normal person takes for granted that they will not fall in the
shower and break their glasses; the klutz takes for granted that they
will probably stub their toe today on an object that has been sitting
in the hallway for three weeks. Both find the experiences of the
other alien.
This means that it is a continual source of surprise to me when
things manage to go right. Several weeks ago I was playing
volleyball, for instance. The several times I got a mouthful of dirt
were not surprising; and being elbowed in the face hurt, but that was
not surprising either. What was surprising was that I was actually
able to hit the ball over the net. And so every score was a
desperate score; every win was by the skin of my teeth, regardless of
the actual number of points we won by.
A
team of normal people might have fun when they play volleyball, and
they might have joy when they win the game. But I will have the
most fun, and every win for
me is an exhilarating and
improbable win.
Walking without hitting anything is everyday for the normal person;
walking without hitting anything is a fantastic adventure for the
klutz. I will therefore cheer the upright person for not submitting
to the tyrant rule of the ground—every bicycle that does not fall
and every runner that does not trip is a miracle from God.
The
life of a klutz may bring more bruises, but
on the rare occasion that we do not stub our toes, we will have more
joy than the most optimistic athlete.
