I have a dream.
It's a big dream.
A VERY big dream.
I dream that one day Alexis will wake up and she won't be accident prone anymore.
I know, it's probably the most unattainable dream of all time.
For as long as the kid has been alive, she has had an amazing ability to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The floor has been known to reach out and grab her. Walls attack her. Tables jump out in front of her. She's a magnet for inanimate objects. In a typical week, she will crash into a wall at full speed at least twice, smash her head on the underside of a table once, and trip while standing perfectly still at least once.
For a while, I wondered if there was something wrong with her. Maybe a spatial thing? A balance thing? Something?
But, no, she just has an amazing ability to sustain injuries. AMAZING.
You guys, Alexis did not make it through a single week of summer camp without getting an Incident Report. Every single week, without fail, she was injured somehow. And only about half of the injuries were self-sustained.
The other half were a matter of just plain being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One time a kid fell off of the monkey bars and landed squarely on top of her, knocking her to the ground. Another time someone accidentally pelted her too hard with a flying ball while playing dodgeball. She was the victim of an incident involving a water balloon, another with an exploding soda water bottle, and once she was knocked over when another kid bent over to grab a rock.
I'm not exaggerating. I wish I were because I started to really feel bad for the camp staff who had to write up all of the incident reports. They felt awful about it every time she got hurt, but it's just her way.
She's not immune to injury when she's around me either. One evening we needed to make a quick stop at the grocery store. As we walked down the main aisle at the front of the store, I suddenly found myself being ran over by a wheelchair. Literally. As in, the woman pushing the wheelchair was all ZOOMY ZOOMY ZOOOOM! and ran over my foot with both of the wheels on one side of the wheelchair. My first reaction was to hiss at the lady, but my second reaction was to reach out to Alexis and hold her back so she didn't get ran over as well.
You know what? It's best if when you go to grab your kid you don't have your car keys in your hand. I completely bashed her face with my keys, probably injuring her more than the wheelchair would have. WHOOPS.
Most people want to put their kids in bubbles to protect them from the world. I want to put Alexis in a bubble to protect her from herself.
