OyChicago blog

Ouch

You know that feeling you get when you know you’re about to trip, but if you’re lucky, you can still “catch” yourself in time to save yourself from embarrassment and pain?  I thought I had “caught” myself yesterday morning as I hurried down Southport to catch the brown line for work.  So. didn’t. catch. self.  What broke my fall instead, was my mouth and big nose hitting the cement pavement.  OUCH!

Let’s back up a second here.  I’m a klutz.  I know this and I do my very best to take this into account during my daily life.  I carefully get on escalators for fear I’ll fall or worse get caught, I always hold the railing on a staircase— I’ve crashed enough times to know better.  I’ve been known to trip over X and knock into Y more times than I’d like to admit.  But really?  I tripped over myself, yes, just myself, not a hole in the pavement, not  those metal grates in the sidewalk, just tripped over myself and wiped out so bad that I now sit here with cuts and bruises covering my nose, mouth, chin, shoulder, hand, and both knees.  My lip is the size of a blimp.  I made an emergency trip to the dentist to make sure my teeth aren’t going to fall out—they’re not.  And a face that could scare young children.  Not kidding.  Yeah, even for me, this is pretty impressive work.

I know Jews don’t believe in karma, that’s for Buddhists and Hindus and whomever else, but I must have done something pretty bad to someone to deserve this kind of a fall.  Seriously.  Can I use Oy! to take a moment to apologize to anyone whom I may have harmed recently?  I’m very sorry.  I know Yom Kippur is still a few months down the road, but it may as well today be for me.

This has been very therapeutic.  Thank you Oy!sters.  Hopefully, some of you can relate a little.  Although, I really hope no one else has tried to pick a fight with the sidewalk.  You will lose.

 I’m really not quite ready to laugh yet, not while my face can be described as a) a third world child with a really bad cleft palate, b) bad lip injections gone very wrong, c) a domestic abuse victim or d) (my personal favorite) a really bad case of herpes.

Ok, that’s kind of funny.  Ha! Ow!  It hurts too much to laugh.