Thoughtless Betrayal

This week my brain betrayed me again, and I've got the bruise on my thigh to prove it. I wasn't injured seriously, of course - that would spoil the game - but enough and in so ludicrous a fashion that any bystander couldn't help but laugh.

Normally, you understand, the two of us get along quite well, my brain and I; the command center has only my best interests in mind. Then there are times when I slam my own fingers in the sliding glass door. After I am done making incoherent noises that sound something like pig-Latin cursing, I say out loud, "Really?! How does that happen?"

How does it happen, indeed! Slamming someone else's fingers in a door is an honest mistake, but it's a rudimentary thing for my brain to advise my own fingers to remove themselves before a glass door trundles into them. There is either a leprechaun up there pushing buttons (as my brother always suggested), causing glitches, or I am hitting a snooze button inadvertently during some simple but necessary action.

I once...or twice....or, uh, a few times, tried to move a cookie sheet, fresh out of the oven, with no protective mitts, systematically killing the nerves in my hands. How does that happen?

Several times I've stood up into an open cabinet door, the one I just left open, scarring my back in a couple places. How does that happen?

Just two weeks ago I rounded the corner into the laundry room, shoving open the door, and planted my face square into the door jamb as I turned. Dear sweet heavens, I HATE having my glasses rammed into my brow and nasal bones - especially by me! And, blast it, my sweet, new spectacles got all bent out of shape. Now, really, and I mean really, how DOES that happen? 

The latest incident happened a couple of days ago. I was pitching baseballs to my youngest two outside when my daughter Ella decided to set up an old bat, its top missing, as a tee. She placed a hard plastic whiffle ball gingerly on the base of the handle and got ready to hit.

"Hurry up, Ella!" I said, standing right in front of her - not twenty feet away. "I promised to pitch Danny some more balls."

So she wound up and fired that ball at a bazillion miles an hour straight into the soft, fleshy part of my inner thigh (as opposed to the flabby, squashy part of my outer thigh). I immediately doubled over in pain and indignation. Crying out loud, didn't she see me standing right in front of her? Why on earth would she take out her poor mother like that? Couldn't she just tell me to move?

Ella rushed over and kept murmuring, "I'm sorry, Mama. I'm so sorry, Mama," as I stared at the pink half-moon on my leg for a couple moments in outraged silence. Then, quite suddenly, the absurdity struck me, and I began to chuckle, and chortle, and threw my head back in laughter. Ella quickly joined in, slapping her knees in relief.

"I was standing right in front of you!" I cried merrily, breathlessly. "And I didn't even move out of the way!"

And I know exactly what my bemused brain, that eternal mischief-maker, must have been thinking:

Well, lookey there! Wouldn't you know it? The girl has a sense of humor!