Clean This Room, part 2: Casualties of Housekeeping

A couple of weeks ago, I told a story from my childhood about cleaning my room.  You’ll remember that my mother had sent me to my room with the command to remain in there until I had cleaned it to her satisfaction.  Here is another such story.

I was tidying the room as instructed. I was organizing the shoes in my closet when I realized that one pair of shoes was not there.  I had left them in a room on the other end of our house.  This placed me on the horns of a dilemma.  Kid logic told me that I had to have those shoes if I were truly to organize my belongings, but I wasn’t allowed to leave my room.  What to do!  I decided I had to have those shoes.  I poked my head out the door to see where my mother was.  No sign of her.  So I tiptoed down the hall, through the living room, and into the other wing of the house (someday, I’ll have to explain this rather odd and large house—that’s a story for another day).  No one had seen me!  Whew!  Relieved, I put the shoes on my feet (the easiest way to transport them) and hurried back to my room.  This time, I abandoned stealth in favor of speed, tearing down the hall and into the living room.  As I rounded a bend, my ankle twisted on the wedged heel of shoe and I fell head first into a sofa.  I did not hit the soft cushioned side of the sofa.  No, my forehead collided with the corner on the back of it.  No longer afraid of being discovered, I screamed.  My mother and sister came running.  My mother knelt beside me and took my head in her hands.  My sister, who hadn’t had a good look, said, “Oh, she just bumped her head.”

But my mother pushed my bangs off my forehead and said, “No, she’s got a really big bump here!” She gently led me to the kitchen where she set me up with an ice pack.

It turned out to be one of the more significant injuries of my childhood.  A large lump with two purple gashes across it rose over my right eye.  Soon the eye had a bit of blood in the outer corner and a blackened bruise developed under the eye.  I brought it to show-and-tell at school.  I remember my delight as my classmates in third grade recoiled and shuddered when I lifted my bangs to reveal the gruesome injury.  It. Was. Awesome.