Humpty Dumpty Had A Great Fall (But A Horrible Summer)

Despite my humble upbringing on the mean streets of Brooklyn, and my modest current lifestyle at The House on the Hill, I do have royal blood, Modern Philosophers.

I am King Klutz.

I clumsily rule over my empire with a bloodied head bandage as my crown and a battered crutch as my scepter.

It was only a few months ago, after many years of legal battles, that I was finally able to get ambulance crews from following me everywhere I went.

Sure, it was convenient to have them there when I inevitably fell and spilled more blood, but their constant presence made me feel jinxed.  It was like knowing that a medical team was always just a few feet away predisposed me to take a tumble.

After all, it would be rude to waste the time of those poor EMTs, who could have been off saving lives somewhere else.

But this blog post isn’t about my finally winning my independence from my Good Samaritan stalkers.

This tale is about how I somehow managed to trip, crash land, and draw blood while out for a casual after dinner stroll last evening.

As you well know, since I won’t stop writing about it, I have been on a fitness tear over the last few months.  I’ve collected well over a million steps since April first, and prior to last night, had managed to keep myself upright and free of blood stains for every one of them.

But King Klutz must always make an appearance so that his subjects know he is alive and well.

Long live the King…if the King can manage to avoid doing anything clumsy enough to put his life in danger.

So I was just walking (something I’ve been doing very successfully for over four decades) when I suddenly found myself sprawled out on the sidewalk.

From what I could tell, no one had jumped out and shoved me to the ground.  There wasn’t an earthquake that shook the earth and threw me off balance.   A Flying Monkey didn’t dive bomb at me.

I just tripped over my two left feet, and spilled Royal blood on a sidewalk outside of a commoner’s dwelling not far from The House on the Hill.

Of course, I do place some of the blame on the other side of the Atlantic, in a country that still has a Queen and adores its Royal Family.

I’m not going to call out a woman in glasses, who is a devoted reader of this blog, but I was texting her when King Klutz decided I didn’t have enough physical comedy in my life.

Yes, I was probably eager to impress a beautiful Brit by showing her that Queen Elizabeth had a little competition on the good side of the Atlantic.

I just wish I had given myself advance notice of the plan.  Now that I’ve lost all this weight, I had forty fewer pounds of cushion to absorb the pain of my proving that the Earth’s gravity is still working perfectly.

Look at my poor hand!

I’m left handed, so I really put my writing career in jeopardy with that tumble.

Luckily, I was still able to clutch a pen when I finally hobbled back to The House on the Hill.  Unfortunately, I had to throw out that pen because it was covered in blood.

My leg was much worse, but this is a family friendly blog, and I didn’t want to scare off a large part of my audience, or attract battered leg fetishists by posting the gruesome photos.

After dusting myself off and secretly wishing that there was an ambulance crew nearby to swoop in and deal with the blood, I got back on my merry way.

Thankfully, there was no one around to witness my fall.  The last thing I needed was photos of me sprawled out on the sidewalk plastered all over the internet and on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the country.

While such attention isn’t necessarily that bad, amateur photographers who sell their photos to the highest bidder, never take the time to make sure they get my good side.

I poured hydrogen peroxide on my wounds and then spent the rest of the night on the couch.  Don’t worry, I was smart enough to put up the guard rails to prevent me from falling off the couch and inflicting any further damage.

I cut my hands and my leg…I didn’t hit my head.

The Deep Thoughts were still flowing, even if they were moving through my brain in the Old English that King Klutz favors because he is pretentious and thinks it makes people find him intriguing.

Hey, King Klutz, thou art a horse’s arse!

When it was time to retire for the evening, I had the interns wrap me in bubble wrap and then strap me into the bed.

As a result, I spent the night dreaming that I was a mummy, a hot dog, and a tattered trunk strapped to the hood of an old station wagon.

I woke up sore, bruised, and trying to recall where I’d put my book on interpreting dreams, but without any new injuries.

Forty-five minutes later, the intern with the purple hair finally arrived for work and let me out of bed.

I made a mental note to change the interns’ work schedule so that there’s always someone at The House on the Hill before dawn to assist me if needed.

I need to find a girlfriend.  I’d much rather someone I loved unstrap me from bed in the morning, you know?

Hopefully, King Klutz has gone back to his castle to sit on his big, cushy throne.  I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t make another appearance for some time.

It’s not that I don’t like being King.  I just don’t enjoy the pain associated with the title.

Heavily bruised is the head that wears the crown…