Explaining Those Random Injuries Takes Imagination

The other day I woke up as I usually do, except something was different about my knee. I started down the stairs and thought it kind of hurt and felt a little swollen. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I had done. It wasn't like I had some glamorous accident playing beach volleyball. I just woke up like that. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like I don't have a history of random bumps or bruises that have mysteriously appeared. In fact, I have so many I have contemplated writing down each time I run into something so that I can attach an explanation to the bruise or scrape that suddenly shows up somewhere on my body. Last winter I woke up with my hand hurting so badly that I could barely move it. I vaguely remembered falling into the house (I remember that one because the mishap was witnessed by my husband) a week or so earlier. Then I ripped up old carpeting and removed thousands of carpet tacks, but how could that cause such pain resulting in a wrist splint for two weeks? Unfortunately, there was no exciting story to go along with it. People would ask what happened and I'd embarrassingly respond, "Well, nothing. Nothing happened." After a day or so of this I jazzed it up a bit by saying "I fell." What I should have done was to add, "...down a long flight of stairs while I was chasing an armed fugitive!"  Maybe the bruise stories need a little embellishment too. "That bruise? I got that one from a rough landing when I was skydiving over the weekend...um...in Tahoe." Maybe I could explain the cut on my hand by saying I was whipping up a gourmet meal with Rachel Ray.  As I imagined the weird feeling in my knee getting worse for no apparent reason, I could envision people asking me what happened and me saying, "I don't know.  I just woke up like that one day." Which would be just as embarrassing as the wrist injury. I don't know why I worry about explaining unexplained injuries to people. Maybe it's because I lead a pretty uneventful life, or maybe it's because I just feel old. It's just another quirk in my life that I'm learning to get used to. So if you are wondering what happened to my knee, it happened when I was water skiing, no, slalom skiing, no, barefoot skiing! Oh who am I kidding? It's like all of my other injuries...I have no idea.