In which I reveal why I am a FABRICATED goddess....

It's a testimony to my mother's powers of parenting that I somehow, through sheer willpower, manage to come across as somewhat poised. I have had friends confess that when they first met me, they thought they couldn't be my friend because I seemed too put together and it made them feel self conscious. It's true, I make a good first impression, but beyond that, I regularly have to remind myself that part of my charm is my potential for self esteem annihilating situations. If I were a REAL goddess, I reason to myself, these things wouldn't happen to me. I've just always been the kind of girl that weird stuff happens to. Call it clutziness. Call it bad luck. I figure it's God's way of keeping me humble because really, once you've managed to tip your purse and all it's contents into the toilet at work on the first day of your new job, you realize that there is nothing you can really do to avoid these situations. Once in high school, I stopped at the top of a busy staircase during period change to retrieve an errant pencil case - stooping over in the most lady-like manner so as not to expose any of my feminine dainties (I was wearing a skirt) - I somehow lost my balance. I buckled at the knees and rode down the staircase using my shins as a boogie board. I confess that THAT time I did want to peel up the linoleum and hide my battered body from the rest of the student population but at some point along the way, I stopped being embarrassed by my mishaps and just accepted that they were going to happen whether I liked it or not. A few more examples for your reading pleasure: - I once lost my balance during impromptu sessions of interpretive dancing (don't ask) and just scarcely avoided wiping out a table of hors d'oeuvres and three people playing guitars through sheer gravity defying body contortions that left me sore for three days afterward. Did I die of embarrassment? OH NO, I most certainly did not. I laughed it off with ease. HAHA! -Another time, at a youth group party, I was strong armed into playing a game that I was reluctant to play. Somehow, I managed to completely reverse the ACTUAL directions and devised a stratagem that was the exact opposite of how the game is supposed to be played thus making a complete ass of myself, but it didn't stop me from continuing to show my face at youth night. -Shortly after Erin and I were married, I tried to position myself seductively on the edge of our bed. Somehow I didn't quite make the mark and flipped backward - ass over tea kettle style. Did I mention that I was buck naked at the time? And even this tres sexy debacle didn't stop me from assaulting his eyes with future potentially mood-killing moves. I'm resilient like that. However, I can take comfort in the fact that it IS partly hereditary. I mean, what one of my aunties or my mum have not had similar kooky things happen to them? Case in point: My Aunt Mary once managed to get toilet paper tucked into the back of her pants while using the restroom at a restaurant. She then trailed a piece of toilet paper back to her table that was so long, the restaurant almost charged her for the whole roll. Are you getting the picture? This is beyond my capability to remedy. Fast forward to Wednesday morning. Finn and I stopped by a friend's house while Ethan was at a gymnastics class. The purpose of the visit was to rough in the outline of a mural that I am painting on my friend's daughter's wall but we also had a visit and a cup of tea. Finn played, did some puzzles and tried repeatedly to alternately maul both myself and my lovely friend. He is also going through one of those really annoying phases where calling people 'poop heads' and taunting 'baby' seem really really funny to him. Try as I might, I have yet been able to break him of this. So when he jumped up on me and sprawled face up in my lap and exclaimed "BOOGER!" I thought it was just new material for his routine. "HAHA!" I responded "booger, good one." and I continue my visit. A full 20 minutes later, as I'm loading Finn into his car seat, I catch my reflection in the window and there it is: not a booger, but a wisp of wadded up kleenex flapping in and out with every breath I take. How I did not feel this I will never know. How my friend developed such kryptonic powers of concentration that her eyes do not once give away that she is not only ignoring the horror that is tissue clinging tenaciously to the edge of my nostril but also carrying on a conversation with me, is beyond my comprehension. My brain would have surely short-circuited from the effort of trying not to stare and talk at the same time. [SIDE NOTE: Once in high school, there was this boy I like, who apparently liked me back and in one of those very awkward first contacts he paused to blow his nose rather vigorously. Somehow in the tussle a giant booger ended up on the end of his nose and he didn't notice it and rather seamlessly continued our conversation. It was too much for me. I think I blurted out something like "fffnaaarrrrph zrept! BYEEEEEE!!" and ran away. I couldn't think about NOT looking at IT and talk at the same time.] I don't know how you pulled it off, but my hat's off to you for keeping a lid on it. I wouldn't have been able to hold it together that long. And of course, I did the only thing I could think of to do in a situation like this: I laughed at myself all the way home.