Things that make me VERY CRANKY #433: My Body's Views on the Importance of Sympathy

As you may already know, I have superlative reflexes, and I’ve therefore prevented many a breakage in my lifetime by swiftly grabbing whatever’s falling (crockery, spectacles, children) microseconds after realising it’s slipped. There are a few things I find irritating about this gift; one of them: why can’t I be really good at something even remotely cool instead, like painting or guitar-playing? Another one: I instinctively stick out a foot to catch whatever my hands can’t make it to in time, and if the falling thing is a) very sharp, or b) very heavy, this is a terrible instinct to have.

Yesterday I tried to rescue a falling toy oven by sticking my foot out to lessen its impact as it crashed to the floor. It was our neighbour’s toy, and I’d turned just in time to see it clattering from the shelf (Hazel was pulling it), which meant, respectively, a) I was keen for it not to break, and b) I had no idea how heavy the thing would probably be. It was very heavy; it flipping hurt. I had a couple of waves of pain that made me seriously wonder whether curling up and crying would be a wise thing to do, but I decided against it (my neighbour’s lovely, but this would surely add a layer of awkward to our relationship from which it may never recover). Instead, I stoically sat down for a cup of tea and tried to concentrate on the conversation rather than the hysterical screams of my foot.

So. Finally home, I sat down to inspect my wound. After all that, you’d expect serious swelling, right? A giant blue-black-purple bruise? Something that would attract instant sympathy? Right?! Nope, no, and no. There was mild swelling and faint bruising, but nothing attention-grabbing or bad-enough-looking for others to fully appreciate the extent of my shocking injury. It’s been aching since it happened, and wearing thongs is unbearable. Hazel stepped on it tonight and I had to run through the should-I-cry? dilemma all over again. All this, and yet my body’s still stubbornly refusing to back me up at all by making my damn foot more colourful and puffy.

You know those times when you have a horrible cold and you feel like death and no one seems to care much, but then a bit later, when you’re feeling comparatively awesome but your voice has dwindled to croaks and whispers, people start patting you sympathetically and offering to fetch you medicine and/or watch your kids and/or cook your dinner, and you have to keep assuring them you feel perfectly fine, it’s just your voice that’s recovering now, and actually, if you’re completely honest, the patting/medicine-fetching/child-minding/meal-cooking would have come in handy FOUR DAYS AGO? You know that?

Why does that happen?! Why won’t my body win me sympathy at the appropriate moments?!?!

It makes me VERY CRANKY. 

Also: Ow.