When I was young, I had this childhood friend. We were near neighbours, as her house was across the park from mine. The first thing that struck me about her, was the myriad of bruises on her shins. I thought perhaps she was beaten, perhaps she played hockey or soccer, something that would account for contact between shins and hard things.
It wasn't long before I discovered the truth. We were walking along together when she tripped over her own foot and skinned both knees on the pavement. I rushed to help her, but she was already getting to her feet. " whoops" she said.
This was just the first of many accidents I was witness to. She had no sense of where the world stopped and she began. She hit her head on corners, tripped on curbs and bashed her arms and legs on table tops and chair legs.
As we grew older she twisted her ankles while wearing high heels, fell out of windows drunk and still continued to complain about supposedly unexplained bruises on her shins and elbows.
She was constantly checking herself for new spots of purple and yellow skin and then marvelling at their existence as she located a new one. She picked off scabs before they healed and seemed dotted with small scars like a subway map.
Years later, when we had drifted apart, I ran into her on the street. She walked into my chin, then stood rubbing her forehead. Recognition dawned on her face and she lept towards me with open arms and hit her fingers on a drain pipe. We were exchanging pleasentries when three children ran up behind her. One was pointing to a bleeding knee, the other rubbing his elbow and a third crying and sucking a finger. "This is Mark, Shelley and Paul" she said.
Later I heard she had slipped into a coma after she tripped on the soap and fell clutching wildly at the shower curtain in order to steady herself. Unfortunately this had brought the rail down too and impaled itself in her stomach. She had lain there all day as her three children were all too weak to reach her or hear her cries as the had all contracted mumps in the same week.
When I was sixty I saw her again, looking well and healthy. " I've taken up rock climbing" she said.
