Yes, fine, I can't deny it. I've been a klutzy SJG since I tumbled into existence in the backseat of my father's Oldsmobile. Not exactly a ladylike arrival. It's pretty much been downhill since then. I broke my collar bone at three, rolling out of bed onto the floor. When a big rubber ball hit me in the stomach, I went flying into the air and landed on my butt for everyone on the schoolyard to see. Kids gathered around me, staring, waiting for me to cry. But I didn't cry. I'm the SJG! I don't cry in public. I laughed and then everybody else did, too. Thanks to my mother, a natural born klutz if ever there was one, I just associate klutziness with laughter. My mother delivered klutzy comic relief in the kitchen on a regular basis. I can still see her walking toward the table with a carton of sour cream -- back then, we put sour cream on everything -- and dropping it splat on the linoleum. A big blob of white went everywhere. She looked down at the mess and started howling with laughter. We joined her. How could we not? I can still see her sitting on the formica phone shelf that jutted out of the wall next to the dinner table. She could've used a chair; there were five of them only two inches away. But no, she preferred to sit on the shelf while gabbing with her friends -- until the shelf broke with her on it, sending her to the ground in a heap of hysteria. So I've followed in her klutzy footsteps, with the tripping and the breaking, the dropping and the spilling.
Some days, it's a miracle I remain upright.
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