And she fell down the rabbit hole....

I will preface this post by emphatically stating that I cannot BELIEVE what I am about to write, nor can I believe that you, my dedicated nine followers, WILL HAVE TO READ THIS! Sadly, or more pathetically really, it is 100% true: I.FELL.IN.A.SEWER.

Yep, that actually happened. In my own front yard; and if you know me, you're laughing hysterically right now and shaking your head, because you know that doesn't happen to anyone else. Except Jaymie Hunckler.

Let me back up a bit and those of you who don't know my long, clumsy life story, letting you know that "accident prone" doesn't necessarily apply to me. A more apt description of me might be "disastrously efficient" (and yes, I did just make up the word disastrously, and by the way, is it grammatically correct to use quotations and parentheses together? One never would've known I was a journalism major in college). I tend to take clumsiness and twist and mold it into a confusing mass of "What the heck just happened?!" Seriously - walls jump out at me, floors jump up. When I was a kid, I could often be found wandering around the house with a fresh new bruise quite regularly, unaware of the event causing said bruising, baffling my mom and dad. "That bruise just came there!" was my most frequent excuse for a new injury. As I got older, the clumsiness got worse...

Let's do a little timeline, shall we?

Summer 1991: Three weeks before school started, I was on a summer camp field trip. I didn't QUITE manage to jump up high enough to reach the monkey bars (hey, it was on a FITNESS trail - those bad boys were taller than the monkey bars on the playground). What would you do if you were falling - put your hands out to brace yourself, right? That's what I did. In doing so, I managed to snap the bones in not one, but both, my wrists This, however, worked in my favor. I was the most popular girl in the 4th grade for a month with a neon green and hot pink casts. Oh yea - that happened.

(Creepy note: During this fall, I broke the growth plates in said wrists. As a result, my wrists are the same size they were when I was 9. Weird, huh?)

Spring 2001: Warning: don't screw with sorority girls playing powderpuff football. You're likely to lose an eye. Or hair. Competition runs deep in my veins. Simply put: I don't like to lose. So, after a month of practicing (I SO hope this tradition has continued at Ball State), I was ready to kick some sorority butt. Three plays into our first game of the day, I dislocated the ring finger on my right hand. I didn't even notice it had happened until I looked down and saw my ring finger where my pinky finger should be. I puked. Seriously. It happened. Luckily, one of my sorority sisters was a athletic training major and popped that finger right back in place. Ever the glutton for punishment, I had it taped up and went back into the game. Genius, I know. Two plays later, wouldn't you know I ripped every tendon off the ring finger on my right hand! THAT.SERIOUSLY.HAPPENED. To to this day, you can still see the screws holding my finger bones together as a result of the subsequent surgery that occured later that week (I want it noted, that despite having two broken fingers, I played the rest of the day and we finished as tournament runners' up).

The surgeon, a prominent surgeon in Indianapolis laughed so hard he almost cried when he saw my predicament. This is a surgeon that deals with some professional athletes in Indiana every day, and here I am, this 19 year old college girl that broke THE SAME FINGER ON EACH HAND PLAYING POWDERPUFF FOOTBALL. I'm not sure I'll ever live that one down. Definitely not in the surgeon's mind - he remembered me five years later when my little sister went to him for a basketball injury (a more credible inury, as she's actually GOOD at sports).

The list goes on. I once flew off the back of a moving treadmill and broke my big toe. At our first softball game of the season several years back, I took a line drive right to the shin in the first play of the game. Season over. From then on, I was referred to simply as "injured reserve". I can't win.

So, how does all this equate to falling in a sewer? My job affords me the opportunity to work from home every once in awhile, so, it being a slower season in our industry, I took advantage of that perk a few days ago. After several hours working diligently (really, boss!), I thought it might be a nice idea to take the dogs (you'll meet them soon) for a little walk. There we were, minding our own business, walking across the front yard when I took a step onto one of those giant, heavy sewer covers. Who would ever think those things wouldn't be bolted down! Before I had time to even yelp, that bad boy gave way, and DOWN I WENT.

Holy balls, that hurt! Had my right foot not been planted firmly on the ground, I would've ended five feet under ground in a NNNASSTTYYY sewer! As it is, my left leg was down to the thigh! If I had seen this happen to someone else, I probably would've laughed my headoff (does anyone else have that problem - you laugh when someone gets hurt? It's TERRIBLE!), but all I knew that I was waist deep, left leg, in a sewer....BLECH! It took about five seconds to register that had happened before I felt some crazy pain in my left leg. "Great," I thought. "I'm stuck in a sewer with a broken leg. What the heck do I do now???"

Well, I pulled myself out. Leg not broken, but I have a nasty bruise that runs from foot to shin now. Four days later, it still hurts!!!

There's no real moral to this story. I just thought you might get a bit of humor knowing I fell in a sewer.

*Ten bonus points if you can name the title reference*