W.I.S.M.I.M. (Part IV)

Why I Shroud Myself in Mystery (Part I)
W.I.S.M.I.M. (Part II)
W.I.S.M.I.M. (Part III)

Why do I try to remain somewhat anonymous? Because it seems I have yet another silly shower story (see Part III) and I am not too impressed with myself on this one. First, because I really and seriously am a dork and a half. And secondly, you would think that by the age of twenty-six, I would have gotten it by now – but somehow, she still manages to impress (and frighten) me. Here's the deal:

When I was nine-years-old, I fell in the shower. I can’t recall how exactly, I just know that I told my family I had accidentally stepped on a dropped bar of soap and slipped. I can’t imagine what I might have actually done to fall, but it must have been awfully humiliating if I thought the whole “dropping a bar of soap and then stepping on it” story was less embarrassing. Either way, I went down hard enough to make a good deal of noise and cause some pain in my elbow.
Now at the tender age of nine, there is only one thing one wants after a painful fall – a mother’s comforting embrace. So I sat there naked and wet with the shower still running, crying a bit and waiting patiently for the panicked footsteps of my mom coming to see what the terrible, crashing noise had been. But they did not come. And so, rather than hauling my ass up, getting dressed and doing a little self-soothing, I decided instead to cry louder.
“Mommie!” I wailed, “Mommie, I fell!”
Finally I heard the sound of my mom’s hurried steps as she rushed downstairs to see what in the world had happened to her now screaming daughter.
She pulled me dripping from the shower, carefully cradling my injured (though not really hurting too much anymore) arm and dried me off. She gave me hugs and kisses and checked me from head to toe to assess my injuries. She asked what had happened (“um…I slipped on the soap…”) gave me sympathetic looks and helped me into a pair of snuggly pajamas. Ahhhh, moms are so wonderful.

Now, ask yourself reader, could you have resisted this outpouring of love? I think not. You would have eaten it up just as much as I did and continued to cradle your arm and bask in the sympathy, despite the fact that you really felt perfectly fine by that point. You might have wondered if it was the best decision when Mom decided it seemed serious enough to drive down the street to the friendly nurse’s house to get a “professional opinion.” You definitely would have had second thoughts about continuing to exaggerate the injury when the nurse said that the arm could possible be broken, or at least sprained, and a visit to the ER was the best thing to do. And you would have had major regrets about the whole stupid fiasco when all the popular girls at school made fun of you the following day because the doctor at the emergency room made you wear a sling for two days. However, you would realize that you had taken the whole attention getting act way too far to have a sudden miraculous recovery, so you would wear the sling just like I did, take the taunting and hope for more mom hugs when the school day ended.
A few days later, I pulled off the sling, headed for the monkey bars and never really gave the episode another thought.
That is until seventeen years later when I was taking a shower and suddenly recalled that day I slipped on the soap. I burst out in uncontrollable laughter remembering what a whiny, little ass I had been. Russ was brushing his teeth in the bathroom when I started my cackling in the shower, so he turned around and gave me the “what is so funny/have you lost your mind?” questioning look.
I cheerfully recounted the entire story to him – telling him that I haven’t thought about nor spoken of that incident for the past seventeen years. We both shared a chuckle and that was the end of it. So I thought. Then it got weird.

Exactly one week later to the day, my mother called. One freaking week later and it is the very first question that she asked.
“Didn’t I have to take you to the emergency room at some point when your father was out of town?”
Are you kidding me? I almost fell out of my chair. I have not breathed a word of this story since I was in fourth grade! I tell it one time, one freaking time, to my husband all these years later behind our closed bathroom door and somehow my mom just knows that I have a confession to make from five states away! How does she do that? I mean, I of course told her the whole story and we got a good laugh out of it but, damn!
“She felt a disturbance in the Force,” was the only explanation my sister had.

Ask me if I believe in God and I will tell you to show me the proof.
Ask me if mothers are psychic and I will say yes, every single time.

101 Things to do (or don't) before you die - #19:
Do master poker and win big in a casino.
Don't mistake commercial printing for original art.

- lada’s eye behold, but see not what they see