Mrs. Waldeck, in the nurse's office at West Campus, blamed Dr. Scholl's and platform shoes.
I blamed bad eyes and big feet.
Its zenith was during high school.
When awkwardness and voluntary invisibility were my social norms.
And where, with hellish irony, publicly bumbling and stumbling became my accidental past time.
Of the many mishaps, there are those which will vanish amid the incalculable missteps I took through my teens. Yet there are other moments which left vivid memories and filled my young mind with self-flagulating, self-awareness.
Built in the early 1970s, Lake Forest High School's West Campus was a giant, brick and cinder block monstrosity which was designed with all the charm and comforts of a state penitentiary. Built to house the freshman and sophomore classes, the new facilities quickly became known as "The Rock."
It was sterile, uninviting, uninspiring, practically windowless, colorless (except for the primary colored lockers) and completely joyless.
It's warden, Mr. Kleck, the West Campus Principal, who was secretly given the nickname, "Banana Fingers" by the students for his freakishly enormous hands, roamed the academic dungeon in his plaid polyester sports coat, smelling of cigarettes and body odor and wielding his insignificant power with what appeared to be more brawn than brain.
Normally wishing to remain far beneath the high school radar, I would have steered well clear of Mr. Kleck had it not been for my destiny with a cement staircase and errant clogs.
I don't remember why we weren't in our baggy, elastic-banded gym shorts when we were leaving gym class that day - except that it had something to do with health or hygiene. We were likely watching an outdated State of Illinois Board of Education documentary on the hazards of smoking. I do recall something of medical diagrams, mildly graphic surgery footage and interviews with cancer victims, including the unforgettable image of a man with a permanent breathing hole cut into his larynx... from which he was blowing smoke rings.
After the film - or whatever mortifying health topic we were discussing that day - the entire class set off for their respective locker rooms down separate cement staircases (one for boys and one for girls) to pick up books and head to their next class.
I never saw the last step.
Somewhere before the first landing, the clog on my right foot attempted a rather daring, but foolish mid-step escape, getting only as far as halfway down my foot. As this happened, I had no choice but continue in my forward motion, landing my half-clogged foot at the metal edge of the cement step.
The next I knew, my body lurched forward, parting the crowd of surprised friends and new enemies ahead of me. Most managed to elude my unbounded free fall. Others were strewn to the sides of the steps, against the cinder block walls.
I plunged through the unsuspecting and somehow came down hard on my back. Aware of little but the grim, fluorescent-lit stairwell ceiling above and the cold, cement floor below.
The stunned and wounded soon roused me back to the moment as they began to regain their feet and regroup. I tried to do the same, but was suddenly shoved back to the cold concrete by our gym teacher, Miss Bradshaw.
"You can't move," she said.
"I'm fine," I replied as I attempted to sit up a second time.
"No," she explained and then proceeded to spew out some jibberish about injury and liability, "I mean I can't let you move. Kelly, run and get Mr. Kleck."
"I'M FINE," I screamed loud enough for surrounding faces to grimace and as my voice echoed off our cement surroundings.
"I'm sorry, Anne," replied Miss Bradshaw. "It's school policy. Mr. Kleck has to make sure you haven't been injured and you're safe to move."
So there I lay, waiting for the dreaded Banana Fingers' diagnosis, while the remainder of the class was shooed on their way.
I thought about how the news of my nose dive was already spreading like wildfire through the bleak, inhospitable halls.
It seemed like an eternity before hurried footsteps could be heard, but finally we saw Mr. Kleck as he trotted up the first flight - banana fingers first - to where I was involuntarily prostrate. His figure soon loomed over me like an oppressive cloud of Aqua Velva and brown plaid and his giant cigar-shaped fingers moved toward me, shadowing my entire, horrified face, like a scene from a Sunday afternoon Svenghoulie movie.
Holding back the urge to belt out my best B-movie shriek, I simply shuddered and answered all the necessary questions, while demonstrating the workings of all moveable body parts. Eventually, I ensured both Mr. Kleck and Miss Bradshaw that there would be know need for an ambulance - or lawyer - and slowly made my way down to the locker room and then off to my next class, achy and avoiding all eye contact.
By the end of the day, I was relentlessly teased by all those who called me friend and to make matters worse, not two weeks later...
I did it again.
It was almost a carbon copy of the last incident, except this time, people were starting to wonder about me, especially Mr. Kleck who (post-plummet) made me go to the nurses's office where Mrs. Waldeck met me at the door, shaking her head and scrutinizing my footwear.
So it should have come as no great surprise when later that year I found myself unwittingly visiting Mrs. Waldeck again.
It was a beautiful spring day and the sun was finally shining after months of cold and grey and everyone was anxious to break out of the pen and breath fresh air. There were still patches of mud-colored snow and ice everywhere and an early spring rain had made the new grass in front of the school bright green and slick. I was thrilled to be able to shed (albeit prematurely) my layers of clothing for a brand new pair of white Calvin Klein jeans and my big, beefy snow boots for Dr. Scholl's "exercise" sandals.
I was out on the lawn with Jean and Megan, who were in with in health class with me, during which we were learning (with far less seriousness than should be afforded when being taught to save a life) the basics of CPR.
To help us in these real world, lifesaving scenarios we had "Annie", a CPR training manikin with a spiffy red track suit and the ability to inspire far more giggling and sexual asides than careers in the health industry. One of the first things we were taught was how to approach the victim in order to determine what the problem might be.
The introductory phrase we were instructed to use was, "Annie, Annie, are you all right?" And then, after receiving a response - or in this case, not, we were to try to revive Annie by shaking her a bit. If there was no response and breathing had stopped, we were to proceed with cardiopulmonary resuscitation - at least that's how I remember it. To be perfectly honest, it was far more interesting listening to the Jean and Megan than our CPR instructor.
With class over and lunch over and Tony Ballotti (West Campus's most legendary maintenance man) taking his final bow for yet another memorable lunchtime Elvis impersonation, Megan, Jean and I headed outside with some others to bask in the sun and toss around a Frisbee.
I should have second guessed the latter decision.
As I was chasing after a poorly tossed disk (MEGAN!), my wooden sandals with their single, red leather straps, hydroplaned across the wet grass, putting me into an uncontrolled forward slide at the end of which my feet found the sky, while my butt contacted the earth and slid another few feet before landing in a grassy puddle.
My back slammed down hard against the earth, knocking the wind out of me. I sat up almost immediately trying to find my breath and when I looked up I saw Jean and Megan racing my way.
Megan ran to my side and knelt beside me.
"Annie, Annie, are you all right?" she said as she shook my arm and convulsed with laughter.
Jean grabbed me with a brute strength her five brothers would have been proud of and lifted me off the ground. I guess I should be grateful that she could only think of the Heimlich Maneuver at this very moment and will never forget the strange sensation of my innards being bear-hugged from behind, while I attempted to both breath and control laughter.
Frightening, yet funny as hell.
With Jean still applying pressure from behind, I did all I could to get "Florence Nighten-mare" to release her death grip. I raised my arms about mid-torso and gave the international hand signal for, "FOR GOD'S SAKE, STOP DOING THAT!” She finally released her hold as I slipped to the ground once more, exhausted, muddy and humiliated, BUT breathing.
Still shaken, my two "rescuers" led me arm in arm across the lawn, past snickering peers, who got an even bigger laugh when I passed and revealed my grassy, mud-stained ass and "big girl" undies now exposed thanks to that lethal combination of white pants and puddles.
When Mrs. Waldeck looked up from her desk and saw me arriving at her doorstep, yet again, I couldn't tell whether the expression on her face was disgust, pity or anger.
It certainly wasn't surprise.
Megan and Jean left me, straining to keep their faces straight, with a juicy story in each of their back pockets which they would retell for decades to come.
Mrs. Waldeck took me to the back room of the nurse's office where I could wash up; and while she was cleaning my scraped, caked and bloody elbows, I heard her mumble something about playing pinochle (instead of Frisbee) and putting all of the latest fashionable girls' shoes into an enormous pile and burning them.
After offering the horribly unsatisfactory suggestion that I slip on my gym shorts for the remainder of the day, Mrs. Waldeck recognized the look of ultimate despair on my face at the thought of having to walk down the halls and expose myself to even further ridicule. Instead, she led me gently to the phone and suggested I call home to see if my mother might bring a new pair of pants. Not surprisingly, my mother was no where to be found, so the day's humiliation was, sadly, not over.
It was a year lousy with bumps and bruises, including a broken wrist gotten while illegally off-roading with my brother and his buddies the following summer. Much to the dismay of my parents and educators, the years ahead would continue to be riddled with minor mishaps of the clumsy variety.
“Slow down,” Mom would remind me time and time again.
But I never did and never have.
Too much going on.
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