Carol’s Column

Life is just a bar of wormy chocolate

NOW I know how Sylvester Stallone felt in Rocky.

In fact I know how he felt in Rocky 1, 2 and 3.

Like Sylvester, I, too, am sporting a black eye and a cut held together with stitches. Like Sylvester, I know what it's like going into fierce battle.

To digress, I discovered something interesting the other day. Some people are born accident-prone, some achieve accident-proneness, some have accident-proneness thrust upon them while others are fortunate — they remain unscathed throughout their lives.

I am one of the former.

Another interesting thing I discovered. Genetics has nothing to do with it.

Personally, I come from a long line of healthy people.

My late, great-uncle Boroch, who is now residing peacefully in the Stellenbosch cemetery, was 103 when he finally expired.

And in all those 103 years, the worst thing that ever happened to him was when he broke a finger nail at the age of 98, while trying to open a tightly-shut bottle of brandy.

My late great-uncle Bor-who occupies the spot next to him, was 101 when she died and her greatest misfortune was to lose her upper false teeth while swimming at the Strand. Leaping about in the brine, she laughed. Her uppers dropped out and were swept away on the crest of a wave.

Luckily, 10 minutes later, they were returned to her on the crest of an in-coming wave — so even that couldn't really be counted as misfortune.

Over the years, my ancestors have fought the Russians, Prussians and Cossacks without losing limbs or indeed anything.

Which is why I cannot understand from whence my accident-proneness comes.

My mother used to call it the wormy chocolate syndrome.

She explained it like this.

“Five children will buy five bars of chocolate and one bar will have worms in. That's your bar. You have a classic wormy chocolate syndrome.”

Which maybe explains why other people's lives run more smoothly than mine.

As a child I was always the one who fell out of trees and had to have stitches in my chin, arms, neck and forehead.

I was the one who caught measles the night of the matric dance. The one whose cottonwool stuffing always fell out of her bra.

The one who missed the water during the school diving competition.

“Don't worry,” said my mother, “you'll grow out of it when you're older.”

“But Ma, 25 IS older,” I'd say in desperation as yet another disaster befell me.

Things were compounded when I married.

None of my friends suffered from the wormy chocolate syndrome.

Agnes married a millionaire who bought her an island in the Pacific. Even Gretchen Ginkle made good when her husband suddenly won a sweepstake and swept her away to the South of France to live like Jackie Onassis.

Hermione won R25 000 with a bonus bond.

All I've ever won is a warrant of arrest from the Parkview police station for supposedly parking a car I'd sold two years previously next to a fire hydrant in Durban.

I spewed forth children like a white rabbit and with the arrival of these children came all the resultant traumas.

No other mother has ever got herself run over by her own pram. No other mother has ever nicked herself unconscious at her little girl's fourth birthday party by jumping out of a tree while making like a sugar plum fairy.

Forget the advertisements that have mothers soothing little children with a kiss and then tenderly applying plasters to cuts and scratches. In this family it's a reversal, my children kiss me better and bandage me up daily.

Take this last accident.

“I've got stacks of work to do, I think I'll pop back to the office tonight,” I announced to my family last Monday night.

“Ma, I'll come with you,” said Ralph. “I want to swot in peace and quiet and it's impossible in this house.”

We worked steadily in the office.

Ralph had just disappeared for a second to visit the cloakroom, when suddenly, without warning, a filing cabinet jumped out and attacked me.

Well, more or less.

I jumped up from my desk, and before I realised it, the filing cabinet cracked me just below the eye causing much blood and swelling.

Ralph returned to find me nursing a black eye.

“Good heavens, Ma,” he said, “I can't leave you alone for a minute. What on earth have you done?”

With the resourcefulness of a 17-year-old, he whipped me away to the doctor, who took one look and darned me like a hole in a sock.

Bruised, battered and stitched, I let Ralph — the proud owner of a sparkling new learner's licence, drive me home.

“Why are you so accident prone, Ma?” he asked as we shot along Greenhill Road cornering on two wheels.

“It's the wormy chocolate syndrome, Ralph,” I replied wearily. “I've suffered from it all my life.”

“C'mon, Ma, you're imagining it. There's no such thing,” and he laughed.

Oh yeah! Then why is it that as I climbed out of the car at home, I tripped over a skateboard and went flying, landing headfirst in the open dustbin?

“You see, you see,” I wailed as I extricated myself, “it's the wormy chocolate syndrome.”

“Well, look at it this way,” said Ralph as he carried me inside. “Wormy chocolate is better than no chocolate at all.”

Oh yeah!

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