Punky Bruise-ter

I bruise easily and quite often have mysterious bruises on various parts of my body that I assume are from the myriad of things I run into on a daily basis because I’m a bit of a nob and tend to run into stuff (furniture, walls, pets, etc.).

I bruise so much, in fact, that during a routine medical exam back in college my doctor started asking subtle questions about if I was still seeing my high school sweetheart, how things were going and the like — basically he wanted to know if my BF was the reason for the various bruises. As if. I only outweighed the boy by forty pounds — I totally could have taken him if I had to.

With all the bruises I acquire with no certain recollection of having gotten them, I’m always mildly excited when I do something and think to myself “that’s going to leave a mark!” Strange for such excitement, to be sure, but I, myself, am a little strange.

My most spectacular and rewarding bruise was from a tumble I took on the ice-covered steps in front of my apartment a couple of winters ago. For one thing, I rather wish someone had caught the actual fall on candid camera as it was rather impressive. My legs literally went out from under me and ended up above my head as I came back down to land solidly on my backside. I actually laid there for a few moments as all the air was forced from my lungs upon impact and I surveyed the extent of the damage to the rest of my body. The good news is that I didn’t damage anything I was going to need later but I did have a sore posterior for the rest of the day. The next morning, passing the hall mirror on my way to the shower, I was more than a little surprised — and a bit excited — by the bruise that encompassed a large percentage of my bum. This was a bruise worth writing home about. The size was impressive by itself — it was huge! — but the fact that the bruise was nearly black was enough to make me want to show it to anyone I could that decency would allow. Needless to say, based on the location of the bruise, this didn’t include a lot of people and I should probably feel at least a little ashamed for the few I did insist on mooning because I was compelled to share this most bodacious of bodily blemishes. I don’t, though.

For as excited as I was about that bruise, you can well imagine the disappointment from notable injuries that don’t bear the fruit of a at least mild skin discoloration. I thought this was the case from a slightly less remarkable tumble I took down my basement steps this past weekend. I was able to catch myself with the railing before I caused any permanent damage at the bottom of the stairs but I still took quite the beating as the combination of warm fuzzy socks, rushing and being slightly light-headed from a lingering cold forced me to skip a couple of steps on my way down to check the laundry. The good news is that, again, I didn’t break anything I might find useful later but the even better news is that I’ve finally developed a nice collection of bruises on my left leg — the one that got left at the top of the stairs while the rest of my raced for the bottom. Again, as no one was there to witness the spectacle that was my limbs heading in as many opposing directions at once as possible, at least I didn’t come away with nothing to show for it.