Graceful Klutz

That’s how my mom described Alyssa. She of the long limbs and flawless cartwheels.

Alyssa started walking when she was ten and a half months old. She started doing cartwheels when she was five year old. She flips, she rolls, she walks on her hands and rides bike like it’s something she was born doing.

But she also bangs her shins on end tables, knocks her wrist on door jams and scraps her toes on curbs.

I think she’s growing so fast that she’s no really aware of her own body and how it fits into the space around her. She forgets that she’s no longer only three and a half feet tall. She doesn’t remember to compensate for her now four foot eight inch frame.

Her legs are constantly flailing about as she carthwheels or handstands her way through the house.

But really, the knocking of knees into walls and hands into desk corners wouldn’t be that big a deal if she didn’t to tell us about every single injury.

Wait, the telling of the injuries wouldn’t be a big deal if she didn’t seem to think that every single bang or scrape was in need of an ice pack and a bandaid or even, sometimes, an Ace bandage wrapped around the injured limb.

Oh, the drama when she draws a drop of blood! You’d think she’d just lost a pint from her poor ravaged body.

I dread the drama of adolescences even as I roll my eyes when she cries out, “Owww, I just scratched myself.”

It’s hard to feel much sympathy for someone who manages to inflict more pain (though I do wonder about her pain threshold, I fear it is quite low) upon herself in an hour that most people manage in a week.

But I always kiss the offered injury, make the necessary coos of concern and then shoo her away knowing she’ll be back in a matter of minutes with a new owie and the need for more sympathy.