I have never broken a bone. I’ve never sprained or dislocated anything either. Although I routinely have bruises, bumps and scrapes adorning my body, I have managed to avoid any major injuries.

I’ve always looked at my injury record with a mixture of pride and disappointment. It’s kind of cool to have a clean emergency room record. It’s a sign that you’re safe and responsible.

On the other hand, if you frequent emergency rooms, you develop a certain air about you. It’s a kind of grab-the-bull-by-the-horns, take-no-prisoners, never-say-die excitement that shoots the proverbial gun of life first and asks questions later.

Just picture Jackie Chan. The man does all his stunts himself, even the really scary ones. He’ll probably eventually get killed doing something crazy (I don’t mean to be morose, but the law of averages is against him), but right now, he’s pretty cool.

This kind of quality isn’t particularly appreciated in bus drivers, movers or tax accountants. When examined closely, it’s often more destructive than exciting. But it’s often admired, somewhat naively, from those people in the “safe” realm.

I was always a little disappointed when a potential injury was accompanied by an insignificant amount of blood and turned out to be inconsequential. I thought in might be nice to point to a scar or a limp someday and tell my listener exactly what exciting an adventurous thing I was doing when I collected “that baby.”

And there were many times in the midst of a hard basketball practice when I found myself wistfully dreaming of some misfortune that would force me to sit out for the rest of the workout. Everyone else seemed to have a bum knee, a broken finger or an asthmatic condition that would occasionally afford them a reprieve. I thought something like that would work nicely because it would allow me to cover up my desire to slack off with a legitimate excuse.

But I stayed almost annoyingly healthy and injury-free. Once a teammate passed a ball directly into my face, but it only managed to mangle my glasses. The closest I ever came to my hoped-for free ride came once when I hyperventilated during line drills. But I exercised extremely poor timing, since it happened right before a water break. I managed to recover by the time practice resumed, and my conscience dragged my lazy body back out onto the court with the other girls.

Whenever I hurt myself, it doesn’t usually work out to my advantage in any way (which, though perhaps a bit idealistic, would be nice). And when I hurt myself, it’s never while doing something stunningly athletic (which would have some justification, at least). And it’s never while doing something cool and daring. No, when I hurt myself, it’s usually while doing something stupid and daring, or it’s while doing something just plain stupid.

I know I’m not alone in this tendency because I have friends who do the same thing. I have a friend from home who broke her foot in elementary school while doing acrobatics in a tree in her backyard. She just recently broke the same foot while running across her living room. (Yes, I said running. She apparently stopped very fast at the conclusion of her dash.)

The crowning example of my stupid injuries would have to be the rope burn I acquired when I was about eight or nine. One day, I decided to have a bicycle race by myself. (Lone bike races generally aren’t very suspenseful, but they can really boost your confidence.) For a finish line, I tied one end of a rope to a fence and the other end loosely around a low-hanging tree branch.

I backed my bike up a ways and charged at my makeshift victory tape. I was quite surprised when the rope failed to give way as expected. Instead of sailing across the finish line, I was knocked off my wheels as the rope caught me soundly across the throat. (Not only did my release mechanism fail to work, but I had also positioned the rope too high. How embarrassing.) It was an unfortunate and painful experience that left a big old mark across my neck. It looked like I’d tried to hang myself or something.

In retrospect, I realize that was a very bad, very stupid, very poorly executed idea. I’m sure it’s not the last idea I’ll come up with. I suppose it’s possible that I will learn to accept that I am not, and never will be, Jackie Chan or any remote facsimile. Maybe it will happen before I do any serious damage. More likely, I will continue this pattern of embarrassing, inconvenient accidents. But if some day you hear of a woman who always pushing the envelope and going to the extreme, check and see if it’s me. After all, you never know.

Juli Hisel is an undeclared sophomore from Richland.