“In the third grade, we were having the Christmas concert, and my class was going to sing three carols. As we walked into the auditorium and went up on the risers, I went up to the top riser because I was a taller boy. When I got there, I turned to face the audience, and as soon as I started to turn I fell sideways and fell on a girl named Jennifer [surname redacted] and knocked her all the way to the floor. She started to cry, and was taken out of the auditorium by some teachers. After we sang, my mother and father came and got me, and took me to where Jennifer sat in the nurse’s office with an ice pack on her chin, and they made me apologize to her and her parents. Then they took me home. For the next week, my mother made me wear a square of masking tape on my shirt that said “Klutz.” Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I can still see that label, backwards, of course: Z-T-U-L-K. When things are going wrong, at work and at home, I feel like I’m wearing that piece of tape.”
From “A Case of Bad Gravity”
Hospital Drive: The Journal of the University of Virginia Medical School
Autumn 2009