Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Becoming more successful can be dangerous to your health

Attack of the Clumsies
by Michael Jackman

My two-year wedding anniversary is coming up. I also just got a one-year appointment as a visiting professor. Suddenly, I've become more successful than usual. Oddly, suddenly I've also become more clumsy than usual.

The other evening while I was slicing a block of cheese I also sliced off the corner of my index finger. My wife, who normally can't stand the sight of blood, fed me paper towels and in general helped me get unbloody, disinfected and bandaged. Maybe she's getting used to a bleeding husband.

Yes, for the past few weeks my hands have had a tough time. If you want to know whether or not I've been cooking, just make like a fortune teller and examine the lines.

Now and then I go through these periods when chances are excellent that I'll cut myself or in general become more splashed and stained than a baby in a high chair. Like a baby, I'll even start tossing objects onto the floor. During one clumsy fit two years ago I broke a cast iron bathtub. Don't ask. It's as though invisible gremlins are flinging my furniture, shaking my utensils and pushing my fingers under knives. That's one theory.

But I needed a better theory. One that would allow me to solve this attack of the clumsies without scheduling an exorcism.

So I called my friend Roger, a psychiatrist, to ask him what might be causing these spasms. Like a good mental health professional, he had a good label. He called the condition "anticipatory anxiety," explaining that when people are fearful of something, even of good news, they discharge their fears in what he kindly called "extra movements."

Apparently it's a way to release tension without consciously facing it. So it protects the ego, but it's hell on the wardrobe, carpet and extremities.

Roger also felt obligated to warn me that many neurological illnesses have the same clumsy effects. These include multiple sclerosis, Lou Gherig's disease, strokes, encephalitis, head trauma, tumors, marijuana and alcohol intoxication and heavy metal poisoning, to name a few.

But given my history of good news followed by bruised limbs and broken coffee mugs, the 'anticipatory anxiety' theory fits me better than a tight bandage or even a bit of crockery accidentally fastened to my flesh with superglue. After all, who isn't terrified of good news. It means a new, better and happier you is on the horizon. So naturally you slice off a finger tip. Makes sense to me.

Come to think of it, when my wife started dating me, no breakable item was safe. She'd come over to whip up a romantic meal and there would go another dinner plate and another wine glass. It gave new meaning to the concept, "high maintenance." If her trail of tears and shards wasn't the sign of honest anxious infatuation I don't know what was. Fortunately, after we married the vandalism stopped, and our wedding gifts restocked the lost inventory.

Although recently she did drive the car into a fence post. She must be really happy.

Hopefully, by writing this essay I'll bring my fears into the open and toss my anticipatory anxiety into remission. Because at the moment life is great, and I've got the scars to prove it.
For Morehead State Public Radio – Fri. 8/5/05
Attack of the Clumsies
by Michael Jackman
(Revised 8/12/05)

My two-year wedding anniversary is coming up. I also just got a one-year appointment as a visiting professor. Suddenly, I've become more successful than usual. Oddly, suddenly I've also become more clumsy than usual.

The other evening while I was slicing a block of cheese I also sliced off the corner of my index finger. My wife, who normally can't stand the sight of blood, fed me paper towels and in general helped me get unbloody, disinfected and bandaged. Maybe she's getting used to a bleeding husband.

Yes, for the past few weeks my hands have had a tough time. If you want to know whether or not I've been cooking, just make like a fortune teller and examine the lines.

Now and then I go through these periods when chances are excellent that I'll cut myself or in general become more splashed and stained than a baby in a high chair. Like a baby, I'll even start tossing objects onto the floor. During one clumsy fit two years ago I broke a cast iron bathtub. Don't ask. It's as though invisible gremlins are flinging my furniture, shaking my utensils and pushing my fingers under knives. That's one theory.

But I needed a better theory. One that would allow me to solve this attack of the clumsies without scheduling an exorcism.

So I called my friend Roger, a psychiatrist, to ask him what might be causing these spasms. Like a good mental health professional, he had a good label. He called the condition "anticipatory anxiety," explaining that when people are fearful of something, even of good news, they discharge their fears in what he kindly called "extra movements."

Apparently it's a way to release tension without consciously facing it. So it protects the ego, but it's hell on the wardrobe, carpet and extremities.

Roger also felt obligated to warn me that many neurological illnesses have the same clumsy effects. These include multiple sclerosis, Lou Gherig's disease, strokes, encephalitis, head trauma, tumors, marijuana and alcohol intoxication and heavy metal poisoning, to name a few.

But given my history of good news followed by bruised limbs and broken coffee mugs, the 'anticipatory anxiety' theory fits me better than a tight bandage or even a bit of crockery accidentally fastened to my flesh with superglue. After all, who isn't terrified of good news. It means a new, better and happier you is on the horizon. So naturally you slice off a finger tip. Makes sense to me.

Come to think of it, when my wife started dating me, no breakable item was safe. She'd come over to whip up a romantic meal and there would go another dinner plate and another wine glass. It gave new meaning to the concept, "high maintenance." If her trail of tears and shards wasn't the sign of honest anxious infatuation I don't know what was. Fortunately, after we married the vandalism stopped, and our wedding gifts restocked the lost inventory.

Although recently she did drive the car into a fence post. She must be really happy.

Hopefully, by writing this essay I'll bring my fears into the open and toss my anticipatory anxiety into remission. Because at the moment life is great, and I've got the scars to prove it.

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