By Julie Smith

I've been chasing grace all my life. Not the kind that saves your soul, but the kind that keeps you from lurching in front of a bus.
I was born clumsy and will die clumsy. Falling off the embalming table wouldn't surprise me one bit. I had a common birth defect that delayed walking. When I did start toddling, I crashed every 10 seconds.
One day, my parents watched me trip and fall for the umpteenth time. Mother lit a Lark, looked at Dad and said, "I've got a bad feeling about this one."
The rest of my family was graceful: Mom, Dad and my oldest brother, Bubba, were dancing fools. (As a teen, Mother won prizes for jitterbugging.) My sister, Moonbeam, was a majorette famous for twirling two flaming batons at once. My other brother, T-Bob, was klutzy just once, but it was a whopper. When he was about eight, he developed a nasty habit of teasing a neighbor's dog. (T-Bob was a mean kid.) The dog, Sam, was kept on a chain. When T-Bob teased him, Sam would snarl, lunge and cut a flip when he hit the end of the chain. T-Bob found this hilarious.
You know what's coming.
One day he teased, the dog leaped... and the chain snapped. T-Bob jumped back, tripped and fell. Sam was on him in a second, biting his throat again and again.
The neighbor, who was napping, was awakened by T-Bob's screams. He ran out and pulled Sam off. T-Bob scurried home down the dirt road. He slipped in the back door quietly, but his ragged sobbing gave him away. Mother walked into the kitchen and saw her youngest son with blood pumping from his neck. She knelt in front of T-Bob. "Did you fall on a broken bottle?" she asked. "No ma'am," he whispered. "I was teasing Sam." "Bet you won't do that again," she said calmly. She grabbed a dishtowel. "Here, press this against your neck and get in the car." T-Bob obeyed.
Mother turned and threw up in the sink. Then she splashed her face, grabbed the keys and drove to the emergency room. T-Bob got six stitches, and 40 years later still doesn't own a dog. My penultimate clumsy moment happened two weeks ago, at the James F. Dean Theater in Summerville. My sweet husband, Widdle Baby, took me to see "Noises Off," one of my favorite plays. Our seats were at the end of row G, next to the wall. Before the performance started, I decided to go to the ladies' room. I always face forward in such circumstances, to keep strangers from seeing my south side.

I crab-stepped to the aisle with no problem. Coming back, however, was a crisis. I was sidling past an elderly couple when I tripped and fell forward like a dead tree. My hands flew out and I grabbed the woman by her shoulders, to keep from collapsing into her lap. If I could have dropped dead, I would have. But this wonderful lady smiled into my eyes and said, "Dear, you're light as a feather."
That, my friends, is grace. Julie R. Smith, who fell down twice while typing this, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.