CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- "I'm running low on ideas on what to write about," I said to a friend. "Run across anything lately that might make a good column?"

Instead of answering, she grabbed my arm and examined the bruise which ran from elbow to wrist. It was a veritable sleeve of colors, from yellow to a deep purplish blue.

"How the heck did you do that?" she asked.

"I fell off my desk," I answered.

"And you're asking me for column ideas?" she said. "That has to be a story."

"I suppose it would fit the season," I said. She looked at me blankly, the wordplay not sinking in. "Fall," I said by way of explanation.

She must've been hoping there was something lascivious about my tumble, since she seemed disappointed upon hearing my injury resulted from a remodeling project and not a sexual tryst.

Basically, I was standing on my new homemade desk, screwing in a clip for a light, when I grossly misjudged how close to the edge I happened to be.

It was one of those slow-motion falls, where you recognize you're falling, realize it's unavoidable, and begin evaluating the items upon which you'll soon land while adjusting your limbs to minimize damage.

Notice all the yous in that previous paragraph. As if the rest of you are as clumsy and experienced at falling as me.

Although I haven't yet reached the point where I'm on a first-name basis with emergency-room personnel, it's certainly not for a lack of trying.

There was the Christmas-morning elbow dislocation.

The stumble down the stairs at the newspaper that rearranged my ankle.

The poorly placed ladder during the porch screening-in.

Fortunately, the tumble from my desk required no medical intervention, although the word intervention does tend to be spoken more frequently at our house following one of my spills.

"Maybe you should start factoring in the cost of medical care when you're estimating a project," my husband said recently. "You aren't saving money by doing it yourself if we're running to the hospital as often as to Lowe's."

My teen daughter likes to tease that I'm emo -- slang for those who dress all in black and cut themselves, claiming it releases their pain.

"But I don't do it on purpose," I said. "What do you call people who accidentally injure themselves?"

"They're mostly called klutzes," she said. "But I'll probably just keep calling you Mom."

When Celeste shared the news of my fall to some of her friends, it inspired a round of "yo mama" jokes, in my honor.

Yo mama so clumsy, when she gets out of bed, her feet miss the floor.

Yo mama is so clumsy, she got tangled in a cordless phone.

Yo mama is so clumsy, she got run over by a parked car.

On the up side, at least clumsy mama won't run out of column material any time soon.

Reach Karin Fuller at karinful...@gmail.com.