Flummox

Life is hard when you're a klutz. Fortunately for me, I haven't broken any bones. This is surprising, however, when you consider how many times my fingers have been smashed by the old window in Great Aunt Jane's cabin, how many times I have tripped over my own feet, been electrocuted by the horse fence, been stabbed by unnaturally low tree limbs, smacked my head on the doorway down to our basement, crashed on my bike, etc. etc. on and on. Spilling is my favorite past time however. I have reached records of the most accidental spills in one day. One of my reoccurring childhood memories is mopping up the floor because I have spilled water all over the place, trying to fill the glasses for dinner. If ever I was lucky enough not to just drop the water jug at the beginning of the whole ordeal, everyone could always tell who filled the water glasses when they sat down to dinner and their dinner plate held more water than their glass. At one point, my mom just stopped asking me to help. I guess it was one way to get out of things.
Even worse than the physical klutziness I experience every day is my uncanny ability to stick my foot in my mouth or simply to say something without really thinking about it first, only to realize after a second or two that the situation has suddenly become very awkward. I could go on for several pages, but I will briefly highlight some key moments or generalizations.

1. Making racist comments that I don't even know are racist. (Sorry Rebbecca, and Ricky)
2. Horny toad story. In grade school my friend was telling me that the mascot of her mother's elementary school was a horny toad. Well, being the innocent Provo elementary schooler that I was, I attempted to make one of my slapstick (corny) jokes that I am so well known for, and blurted out "Well, that darn toad must have been very horny!" As soon as people began to laugh, I realized they weren't laughing at my joke the way I had meant it. "Go ask your mom what that means!" people began taunting me. Oh, poor little Amy.
3. Most recent. I had just met some people at FHE and was busy chatting about nothing when, for some reason the topic of the PBS program on Mormons came to my mind and I was attempting to say how my boss had watched it and ended up thinking Mormons still lived like pioneers. Well, the words flowed smoothly through my mind but some how the acronym PBS got mixed up and came out as PMS. "So my boss saw that show on PMS about Mormons...." All of the sudden I realized what had just come out of my mouth. "Did I really just say that?" I thought. I'm sure my face turned beet red, I had to hide it somehow but all I could do was laugh. Later I received a text message that began "Hey PBS..." I have been tagged. No more first impressions.

In all my years of blunders I have learned that if you don't laugh at yourself, you'll just cry, so I laugh a lot. In fact I laugh so much sometimes that I can't control it and people end up laughing at me even harder because I am laughing really hard about something that is not that funny. If you ever want to experience this phenomenon, just ask me to tell you about the pigeon that flew into the window in the train station, or the bird that kept pecking at my dad's head. Ha ha ha, okay, even now I am laughing. I'll stop right now or I'll get myself into trouble. So that is the story of my life as a flummox. It's a pretty entertaining life I'll say.