For the 27th time in almost as many days, I strode out of the living room, turned down the hallway and smacked right into a bookshelf.

“Yeow!” I shook my arm. “I’m bleeding again. My arm is beginning to look like Swiss cheese — the black-and-blue variety.”

My sympathetic wife offered words of comfort: “It’s just like I tell you when you’re driving — stop cutting corners, stay in your lane and watch where you’re going.”

I soaked a washcloth with cold water. “When did you plunk that bookcase in the middle of the hallway?”

“It’s been against the wall for a good year now.”

“The hallway was empty for 20 years. Maybe in another 20, I’ll learn to avoid it.” I winced as I sopped my injury. “You’ve always got me running into things — shelves, tables, chairs, the cat…”

“The cat?”

“OK, she’s a moving target. But the rest… Why do you keep moving stuff?”

“Ah,” the ever-intellectual Terry said. “You suffer from proprioception.”

“I suffer from a lot of things but not appropriate exception, whatever that is.”

“Proprioception. It’s the awareness of the position and movement of your body.”

“My mom didn’t call it Pepsi-perception or whatever you said. She called it daydreaming: ‘Burton William, pay attention to where you’re going. You could have knocked over the pot and killed the philodendron.'”

“And?”

I involuntarily rubbed my shin. “And I picked myself up off the floor, wrapped gauze around my knee and elbow, stuck a Band-Aid on nose, and went back to reading the book I’d been carrying.”

“So you weren’t paying attention?”

“Mom moved the plant. Right in the middle of the living room.”

“The middle?”

“Well… It was near the archway, right where people might run into it.”

Terry shook her head. “Not anyone with proper proprioception.”

“Dad didn’t call it propeller reception or whatnot. He said, ‘You have the grace of a cub bear in boxing gloves.'” I reached for the Band-Aids. “Maybe it was this paranoid obsession stuff that kept me from being an athlete.”

“Proprioception. Being aware of where your body is in alignment to other objects.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I never showed up in the same place at the same time as the ball did. The ball wasn’t aware of the position and movement of my body. Pogo appreciation, just like you said.”

Terry rolled her eyes.

I huffed, “You’re always moving things right in my way. Like, when did you put the couch there?”

“Six years ago.” She gave me that look. “You really don’t pay attention, do you?”

“I’m not as tiny as you are. You can’t just toss couches about or shove bookshelves into the hallway. I have to walk sideways to squeeze by.” I sidled up to the book case and swung my arms. “See… Ow!” I rubbed another scrape. “If you’re going to keep throwing up random shelves, at least load them with antiseptic cream and bandages. I’ll need them when my pro-perspiration acts up.”

She rolled her eyes. “Proprioception. Don’t trip over that washcloth you dropped.”

Once again, my negligent wife warned me too late. “Ouch!”

“That door’s been there since you bought the house 30 years ago.”

“Stupid puppers relocation.”

“Proprio… Oh, never mind.”

I never do.

Run into Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com.