I have a long history with my mother’s wrought iron planters.  Yes, I can truly limit it to planters.  And, the history isn’t kind.

It all began the week prior to my senior prom (high school), I had been out with friends and was rushing home to make curfew.  I was dropped off at the back of my house and had to run through the back yard.  It was late, and I either didn’t know or forgot that my mother had just treated a wrought iron antique planter earlier that day which she had left on the sidewalk to dry.

Being black and near the back, think darker, part of the yard, I didn’t see it.  I hit the planter full force with my foot and ankle, but my shin took the brunt of the action.  My momentum carried me superman like through the air, over the planter,  and I landed arms and chin first onto the sidewalk.  I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, so my road rash was significant.

Flash forward to the end of the week, wearing a strapless dress and fabulous arm length abrasions along with scrape to chin.  What a scrapper I was.

Yesterday, destiny again set me on a collision course with a wrought iron planter.  In my parents house, on the landing of the stairs is a planter with legs that curve up and out.  The iron is rather thin looking like half-size rebar.  I was headed up the stairs, and I stopped part way up the stairs to pick up some dried leaves that had fallen onto the floor.  Some of the leaves were farther away, and so I went to kneel on the landing so that I could reach the other leaves.

Genius that I am, I managed to kneel onto the planter leg, impaling my shin on the planter leg.

Speaking of impaling, I realize that my battle with wrought iron goes beyond my mother’s antique planters.  When moving out of an ill-chosen and ill-fated apartment in Los Angeles’ Korea town neighborhood, I went to throw out the trash.  The dumpster was surrounded by wrought iron fencing – the kind with the points on each bar.  In my rush to escape, I didn’t go through the back of the building and around to the dumpster to throw out the trash.  Instead, I went along the front of the building – I planned to dump the trash bag and then head to my car.

As I swung the bag up over the fence, I realized too late that 1) the bag was heavier than I had realized and would come crashing down quite quickly and hard, and worse still, 2) that my watch had hooked onto the bag.  The garbage bag, true to form, fell heavily and my arm went down with it, onto one of the fence posts.  Slight impalement.  A tetanus shot and massive bruise later, my collision course with wrought iron was beginning to form a pattern which has now followed me into middle age.  How sad.

As ever,

K. Quinn