I thought I might start running, for exercise and to pass the time, so last week I strapped on my sneakers, turned on my music player and walked out the front door and began to saunter along the sidewalk. Half an hour later, having covered a very unimpressive distance, I was out of breath, my lungs burning, my heart in overdrive and my head feeling a little lighter than usual.

I did this again the next day, and yet again a few days after that, each time following the same route. This morning, as I lazed around the apartment enjoying a day off, I decided it was high time to try it again.

I made it about two blocks.

As my feet carried me from the road back onto the sidewalk, something went terribly wrong. Maybe the front of my shoe caught the pavement, or I landed on some loose sand and gravel, or perhaps my brain’s largely inadequate sense of space didn’t adjust for the five-inch change of height between the curb and the street — whatever it was, I lost my command over gravity.

As I saw the concrete sidewalk rising up to meet me, many things crossed my mind in a way that made it seem like I was falling from a much higher distance and therefore had more time to contemplate my pending doom. Those thoughts included, but were not limited to:

-If I keep running, moving my legs even faster, will I reverse what is about to occur.
- Will my hands move quick enough to cover my face.
- Are skulls built sturdy enough to not crumble apart when dropped onto the cement.
- Is this how people end up with shattered kneecaps?
- Will I break a bone.
- If I am knocked unconscious, will anyone come to help.
- I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

My knee hit the cement first. And then each of my hands. And then my side, followed next by my back. I rolled to a stop, let out a loud groan and cursed, and gave up.

I looked at my hands, which were raw and red on the palms, with scrapes that were drawn on by small pebbles on the ground into straight lines that looked like landing strips where they hit the ground and slid. My knee looked worse, with a thin layer of skin sanded off for about four inches. It didn’t start bleeding for a minute or so, as I limped back home, defeated.

Someone from across the street yelled “Are you OK,” and I said “I’m fine, thank you, but I should probably get this taken care of,” and I forced out a smile and a wave.

No broken bones or cracked skulls, just a bloody knee and a bruised ego.

Perhaps it’s just as well. I have a long history of cuts and scrapes and stitches from my youth that, when looked at collectively, might make some people think I was a profoundly stupid child. Not “stupid,” I insist, but “full of wonder and adventure,” though in these cases I realize it may be a subtle distinction.

I had tonsillitis when I was a toddler — and this I don’t remember — and decided it would be a good idea to swallow a marble, which became lodged in my swollen throat. The Heimlich maneuver forced it out and I could breathe again, though I’m sure I didn’t realize why everyone around me was so relieved.

Around the same age, I ran into a coffee table. Three of four stitches above one eye, and a permanent scare.

In the name of symmetry, I added a similar scare above the other eye years later, when I was playing at a construction site — as I often did growing up in a still-growing suburban community — and fell down trying to maneuver inside the concrete foundation, which, to my surprise, wasn’t designed with the safety of trespassing eight-year-olds in mind.

In the second grade, during a trip to the skating rink, I fell down and split open my chin. Four stitches, and a scar that may mean I will never be able to grow a proper beard.

I needed three stitches on my left index finger when, in the fourth grade, i managed to push a broken umbrella handle into my hand trying to open the red contraption, which was surely destined for the trash, before school one morning.

In the fifth grade, I was beneath a wooden suspension bridge at Chris Akkerman Elementary School — playing on a beautiful new addition dubbed the Creative Playground — when someone ran across. It took a few doctors at least an hour to sew the 11 stitches into the back of my head. Three years ago, more than a decade after that injury, I opted for a buzzed haircut for the better part of a year, and could still see the scar.

I could keep going, chronicling my many, sometimes-gruesome injuries (although, astonishingly, never a broken bone) but you get the idea, and maybe out of disgust most people have stopped reading by now anyway.

As I was tumbling onto the ground on Windsor Street this morning, at the edge of the funeral home parking lot, some of these memories came flooding back and I thought, Well, I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Maybe I should stop being so clumsy. Or stop leaving the house. But I’ll probably just keep going, and gamble that I can continue to escape serious injury, because who wants to dwell on the past?