My kids are at an age where they love to ask me about my life at their age. They love to hear stories, but some of their favourites are the ones about me and my accident prone nature. There is something about stitches, pots and swollen limbs that makes them perk up with interest and jaws drop in disbelief!
Clumsy or accident prone I do not know, but one thing I do know is that when I look back on my life as a child/teen I was often at minor injuries or A&E for one reason or another. It wasn’t like I went looking for trouble, but whether sport injuries, work injuries or general “flying over the handlebars of my bike” injuries, I basically spent a lot of time to and from the hospital, and its safe to say that one of my top 5 social scenes at that age was the minor injuries unit at Bridlington Hospital! I have lost count of all of the stretchy support socks I owned!
The highlight of my accident prone shenanigans, and a story we all love to tell, is the one where I broke my arm tripping on some grass on the path after a week of adventuring in the lake district. You know those tiny tufts that poke through the paving slabs? Yup – after a week of mountain climbing, jumping into rivers and playing in woods, I tripped and broke my arm on a blummin piece of grass!The highlight of this story is when I had the cast taken off I tripped at school 4 days later and broke my other arm in 2 places… I subsequently spent my whole summer holiday in a pot!
Being a mother myself now I can see that Megan especially is a little scatty and clumsy too, just like I was. Thankfully we’ve had nothing too major yet, because at her age I was having my eye stitched and not long after was the whole “2 broken arms” incidents! I can only imagine how worrying and stressful all of my injuries were… especially when I entered the work place as a silly high spirited teen!
Fast forward to my mid teens and I bag myself an awesome job at a chippy (most common option when you live at the seaside). I loved it and worked there for years! I hated smelling of fish, but loved the people, the freebies, having cash in my pocket, and even the bosses were fun to hang with. I have some fond memories and lots of stories too from that chapter. In the beginning I worked there with my sister and that in itself makes for great stories for our kids now. But then you looks at the bigger picture – me and hot fat? Wet floors? Giant freezers? Boiling water? Skinning fish with sharp knives and machines that peel potatoes? It sounded like an accident at work waiting to happen. And on some shifts it was – More so when I reached the age I was able to skin the fish and fry and not just serve hot food and drinks!
At this stage of my life I had many a burn from each shift (hands and arms – once on my face), and even now I still bear the odd scar that remind me of those days of frying food and serving teas and coffees!
There’s the day someone mopped the kitchens, but in my eager bounding way, I slipped, twisted and boom – sprained my ankle, and it flipping killed!
The occasions I spilt boiling cups of tea or coffee down me, slipped with the ladle and had hot curry/Peas or gravy down my fingers, and slipped on a soggy chip (true story!). Of course my main look was a trendy blue plaster on my fingers from cutting things, but despite these natural hazards of working in the food industry with my clumsy/accident prone nature, I absolutely loved the years I worked there.
These days (touch wood) I haven’t had any trips to minor injuries or A&E and I am wondering if I am growing out of it? Theres is the time I got hit in the face with a football, cut my knee on the coral in Mexico, fell down the stairs when I was pregnant with Alice and numerous burns making tea, but these are normal right?? None required a hospital visit, so I feel that in itself is progress! Either way life and its concentrated injuries from sport, life and work when I was a teen are a distant memory. Perhaps I haven’t grown out of it, perhaps I have, but being a stay at home mum certainly protects me from the dangers of the work place that seem to magnify my scatty nature and clumsy ways!
Are you accident prone? How does it affect your work/home? Have you ever had any accidents at work?
