Biting It

Last night, I finished off a spectacular workout by falling down the gym stairs. It is an embarrassing thing to do in itself, but it’s even more embarrassing that it happened because I was being impressed with myself and trying to change my heart rate monitor to show how many calories Her Royal Awesomeness here had burned.

I don’t tend to be clumsy, but there’s a sick fantasy reel that plays in my head of me knocking my teeth out every time I nearly miss a stair (or miss many in a very busy gym) or have any close call with tripping. This whole teeth phobia was exacerbated right before my wedding when the wedding coordinator said, “Honey, be careful. I had a bride trip and knock her front teeth out while walking down the aisle.” Oh.

The teeth phobia probably signifies something bigger and more indicative of my psychological state. A methodologically unsound random selection of Google search results gives us these possibilities:

1. I’m anxious about my appearance and how others perceive me (I’m female and within 2 years of turning 30, this should be obvious)
2. I have a fear of rejection, sexual impotence, and getting old (Who doesn’t?)
3. I’m going to get money (Now we’re talking)

I think tripping on the gym stairs was less a realization of my deep-seeded psychological anxieties and more about thinking I can do multiple things at once. Perhaps, for the sake of my teeth—forget my throbbing ankle and shin—it’s time to slow my roll and do one thing at a time. We get so caught up these days in trying to be efficient and able to multitask that we tend to forget about concentrating on the task at hand. Like walking down stairs. Eric was horrified that after he peeled me off the floor, I went right back to messing with my heart rate monitor while hobbling down the rest of the stairs. This was important because doing this while stationary in the locker room would waste valuable time. Well, now I’m wasting valuable time dragging myself around this morning like I have a peg leg.