My Sinister Side

The universe does not want me to exercise (or perhaps even leave my house). How do I know this? A few weeks ago, on a day when all I did was walk, sit on a stool and do some deep breathing (I’ve gotten into some new relaxation techniques), I woke up at 5:30 a.m. with horrible pain in my left knee. I have a floating knee cap there, but I still never saw two Aleve and an ice pack coming from that day.

Who injures themselves walking and breathing? Apparently, me.

Perhaps more disturbing is that this latest “injury” goes to support my theory that the left side of my body might be evil.

Not evil in a possessed, does-amoral-things-when-I’m-asleep way or anything, but still just a little off. Maybe I just have a difficult left side? I could call it ornery?

On top of the floating left knee cap, I’ve broken my left wrist twice, and yes, when it rains, my wrist hurts. Sometimes it hurts a lot. I have a special brace, like all the cool kids do.

Even the left side of my mouth has issues. I have two crowns and need a third on that side of my mouth. During my senior year of high school, when I had the two root canals that led to the crowns, I was in so much pain before the root canals that I stopped chewing with that side of my mouth. To this day, I still can’t seem to break the habit and most often use the right side of my mouth to eat. (If you thought I was weird before...)

I even think I broke my left toe once, too.

While I like to joke that the left side of my body is evil, I’ve learned that not everyone appreciates this humor. Especially people in the health care field.

On my first visit to a new dentist, he and I were going over the results of my X-rays.

“You have a little decay in some of your molars,” he said. “But I think we can just keep an eye on it for now.”

“Are they on the left side of my mouth?” I said.

“They are,” he said. “How did you know that?”

“I just figured,” I said. “That’s the evil side of my mouth.”

My dentist didn’t laugh. He cocked his head to one side and stared at me in a way that clearly said, “I’m not sure this is a patient I should have given nitrous oxide.”

Little did he know, that was probably the most coherent I’d been during the whole visit. These are just the kinds of things I say. But when I walked into a wall on the way out of the office, I didn’t exactly help my case.*

* That last part was due to the nitrous.