As I do housework (yuck), a decidedly left-brain activity, bits and pieces of ideas come to me for new articles I might pitch to online editors, or a subject I might want to blog about. Sometimes I do right-brain activities, just to come up with a solution for a writing project. And I can honestly say that when it's housework, I stop the moment I have a solution.
Recently, while vacuuming (double-blech), one of my knees gave out and I wobbled a bit before catching myself. It was as good a reason as any to put away the cursed noise machine.
Still. I hadn't thought of anything to write about.
Then I remember. I like to lie.
Rather, I like to tell stories specifically that are obvious lies, particularly about injuries I've had. I'm a writer, exaggeration and hyperbole come naturally. While this may be both a curse and a blessing, as they say, these oral stories (because I vary them, sort of like a work-in-progress) entertain me, if no one else.
One fib I often repeat is that my "bad knees" are related to a sport injury. Right away, those who know me understand that this is likely false. But these days, fewer people question this because I am now a coupon-carrying member of an age group that depends on achy knees to gage the need for an umbrella.
Still, it's been the best excuse I've ever had for not knowing, or learning how to skate, snowboard, or downhill ski.
The way I figure it, I can "sports injury" because I was once treated by sports therapist for said injury. And yet, one look at me and it's obvious that I'm more Atwood, than Collingwood. I've been mistaken for a teacher and a librarian, but never for an athlete.
In fact, once, at a party at York University, two students grabbed one of my high heel shoes and headed straight to their room.
They returned a few hours later with my beer-soaked footwear and semi-sheepish apologies for stealing it. Sure, they'd asked to "see" it and that's why I took it off, but I'd spent a couple of hours wandering barefoot around the party at the residence of my sister's boyfriend and was a bit peeved; the shoes were essential to my outfit. With their two heads bobbing and weaving in unison, they discussed asking me for my other shoe (I was standing in front of them, though they seemed too drunk to notice), because of the possibility of athlete's foot. 
ancing alongside a bonfire with a guy named Mart (whose soft-shoe ability, as I recall, was remarkable for a guy his size), and a practical joke gone awry. It also involved a boulder embedded into the slope of a hill and an arse-over-teakettle fall. The weekend should have also involved a hospital visit, but it did not. (It had potential to involve a lawsuit, but did not.)
Come on. When is drinking out of a high-heeled pump a good idea? Despite their shared stupor, somewhere in the rational region of their cerebrums, they wondered how sanitary this was.
As I stood there in my gold lame dress pumps and matching gold lame outfit (which now resides in a plastic storage bin in my basement marked "Hallowe'en Costumes, 1980s"), one of them slurred to other (who now looked as if he might puke at any moment) that I "hardly looked like an athlete."
Damn straight, I said and turned as gracefully as I could and walked away. I may have been feeling tipsy, but I was still steady on my feet. In part because it would be a year or so before the kneecap calamity I was telling you about earlier.
<::|::>
The truth behind my bad knees involves a Saturday night pig roast "up north," some tap d
So that's my story. And I'm sticking to it.
Unfortunately, I still haven't decided what I'm going to blog about.
LOL. A gal who's familiar with these sorts of ouchies!
Posted by: vb | September 22, 2008 at 05:59 PM
Sports injuries?! I always called them UPI's - Unidentified Party Injuries!
Posted by: Andrea McCall | September 22, 2008 at 08:56 AM