Graceful Me

I am one of those boring people who seldom gets drunk beyond the ability to control my own action or motorfunction. Usually that is.

Once when I was around 16 years old I drank a whole bottle of wine with a straw in the park and my friend had to drag me in to a taxi. This isn’t even my own memory but a story told by others which scared the living daylight out of me. So I spent the rest of my teenage partying days drinking myself pretty and holding my friend’s hair when they were throwing up in the bathroom in the back of a club. These were friend’s who drank tequila straight from the bottle and who apparently did not understand the sentiment of the word enough.

Sure, once in a while I would stumble and fall but as my boyfriend pointed out to me the other day, it had little to do with the alcohol and more to do with my ability to fall over and run my toes in to dead objects.

“You’re always cursing the furniture,” my boyfriend explained one morning very matter of factly. “It’s always ‘damn that chair’ or ‘stupid idiot table’. What you should be saying is ‘stupid idiot feet’” he snickered, recieving a well deserved pillow in his face.

It’s because of my mother you see. My mother always falls, trips or turn things over. I inherented that gene. The clumsy gene. On every vaction we ever took my mother would fall. She would tell me and my sister that we should be careful and then the next second she would slide down the slippery slope on her behind. In New York she got it out of her system right from the start as she flew out of the taxi, falling flat on her stomach right in front of the hotel, just inches from the doorman, a tall African American who was looking down at her. I was so embaressed.

Maybe that is why I stay so much in control when we’re out. Becuase for once I am the person standing up straight. The person who can look at others acting clumsy, falling over, and for once feel like a graceful being.