I forgot clumsy

6. Clumsy

I forgot "clumsy" on my list of themes from yesterday. Husband thought I should add it. I had never considered clumsy to be one of my life's themes, but he's right, let's face it, it is. I am forever clumsy. My father used to tuck my long hair into the back of my shirt so I wouldn't dip it into my food during meals. I was never allowed to eat or drink anything while on any carpeted surface of my parents home. I should own stock in Resolve for how much I buy the stuff. My husband's favorite clumsy story is the one about the first time we met. It's a classic example of my clumsy theme.

My husband and I met at a local festival here in town. There is no purported reason for the festival other than the interesting fact that it is usually held after all of the students leave for summer break. My town is a college town so the departure of the students can be bittersweet. For all intensive purposes, despite my current status as a student, I consider myself a "townie". Some use this term with derogative implications, but I wear the townie badge with pride. After all, this is the longest I have ever lived in one town and I tend to feel like I belong here. Anyway, it wasn't but a few months after my first husband and I separated when the festival occurred. So, I was doing just about anything to keep my mind off of the divorce. Thus, I took up a friend's offer to go to the festival for the day.

It was an up day for me at the time, in fact, looking back, I was probably hovering in the realm of hypomania. Nevertheless, I was having a great time and felt very energized by the street music, the arts, crafts, and herds of people. My friend and I saw a friend and her husband while they were listening to a local band perform. After some chatting, I finally noticed that the friend and her husband were towing behind them a friend of theirs. I had no idea who this guy was, and in my mood, I decided to find out, pronto. Oh, boy was this guy cute! The first thing to draw me to him was his necklace which consisted of brown wood beads of uniform size with the main bead being a ceramic fish. Then, his t-shirt caught my eye, a Phish t-shirt.

In the same way that you can tell certain things about a person when they have a Grateful Dead sticker on their car, you can read certain things into a person when they wear Phish paraphernalia. For those who don't know who the hell I am talking about, Phish is a music jam band with a similar following as the Grateful Dead. With my first husband, we used to follow Phish around on tour. We were never the cross country followers, but we did coincide our move from California to New York with Phish's tour along the same route. We also were one of the die-hards that sat in line in our car on a Florida highway for 12 hours just to get into the Phish concert for New Year's 2000. 12 hours to travel less than 30 miles! So, when I saw his t-shirt, I knew we had something in common, something fun. It would be my "in".

Somehow, we all agreed to meet later that evening at a local beer bar. Another link- he likes beer, I like beer. So far, so good. I was feeling especially sparky that day with my overalls on and a slightly tighter shirt than normal. When we all met at the bar, we were all feeling pretty lively from the day's festival. We all ordered beers. Now this is where the details become important. The bar is set up with benches and long tables and therefore, even if you aren't at the same table as another person, you can still be fairly close to the person sitting on the same bench or in the same row. In my high mood, I was busy telling stories to entertain my friends and this new guy. It should be noted that a full pint of beer was sitting in front of me on our table, and I am not sure whether I had already drank one or not, but I was definitely not inebriated. When I tell stories, I use my hands to an annoying degree. This tactic gets me in all sorts of trouble. So as I told the story with my hands, I inadvertently, clumsily, knocked the entire beer over, spilling the whole pint onto my overalls. I was soaked in beer. Because I do this kind of thing all of the time, I was prepared to laugh at myself.

Sitting there covered in beer, I am laughing with friends when the girl sitting diagonal from me at an adjacent table leans over to the friend across from me at our table. The girl asks my friend if she could try to keep me under control. Now this is where you have to picture a tiny waifish college girl foolishly telling a friend of mine to keep me under control. Oh boy. Apparently, some of the beer I spilled all over myself must have splashed up and dotted her table. Crisis. Once the three women at my table realized what this girl had just said, we just stared at each other while I schemed. I have to admit that the three of us are sizable women. While not fat, we were tall, large boned, sturdy women. I would like to think that most skinny, waif-like girls wouldn't risk picking a fight with three women of our stature, but apparently we were sitting near an exception to my assumption. One female friend finally leaned over to the waiflet to ask her to repeat what she had said. On that note, I promptly got up from the table, went into the bathroom, and unrolled a hefty number of paper towels. Upon my return to our table, I slammed down the paper towels on the waiflet's table and said, "Here you go", and then sat down at my table. The laughter was difficult to suppress, but we continued on with a rather fun night. And no, I didn't go home with Husband-to-be...

...well, not that night anyway.

That was Husband's first impression of me. Good one huh? I am so smooth!