DIANE MAKAR MURPHY I've learned to ignore the pain, but it keeps coming back

OUCH!
Chair leg, meet Diane's toe. Wrench, meet Diane's knuckles. Hammer, meet Diane's thumb. Diane, what the heck is wrong with you?
I have an intimate understanding of klutz-induced pain, from the delayed scream of a kitchen burn to the throbbing agony of a crushed pinky. And I understand its purpose.
Pain is an alarm. It screams, "STOP!" And it makes you so uncomfortable it insists you pay attention, which, hopefully, discourages you from ever doing that stupid, painful thing again.
Every time I slam my head into the trunk lid, hit my toe on the bed leg, or smash my finger between a closet door and jamb, my pain alarm goes off. It did it when I was 2, and about 8,473 alarms later, it's still doing it.
I just wonder when my nervous system is finally going to say, "This moron is never going to get it."
And that'll be the only way I'm ever going to be pain free; if we are to judge by past experience, you can bet I'm never going to stop slamming my body into things.
In the past 24 hours, for example, I grated my knuckles across a chunk of splintery wood, hit my knee with a hammer, stubbed my little toe on a shopping cart wheel, took one of those splinters for my very own, and slit my calf with a rusty nail. Not a typical day, but not totally bizarre either.
Are we having fun yet?
Stress management
When I was young and fanciful, I took a class on stress management through my husband John's health insurance plan. The class was taught by a doctor John had had for another class, and he recommended him as interesting and helpful.
Dr. Gutman had turned some kind of corner, though, by the time I got to him. He would start out talking and, midsentence, disappear somewhere. I don't know where because he was still sitting in the circle with us, atop his green plastic and chrome chair, but he was definitely gone ... as in "Gone, daddy, real gone!"
It went something like this. Gutman would start talking: "We all feel stress. And stress can be good. It's important what we --"
And then, his eyes would cloud over, and he'd just stare. After about 30 seconds he'd finish, "do with it that's important."
Anyway, Dr. Gutman's vacant meditations were not part of John's experience, so we assumed the good doctor had ascended to some higher level, or was taking hallucinogenics. While Gutman was conscious to the group one day, he told us he was going in for oral surgery and wasn't going to use any anesthetic or pain killers.
"There are ways to not have pain," he said knowingly. "I've done it before. But you have to be careful. Pain has a purpose."
Yeah, right. As I said, toe stubbing, head bashing preventive, et al.
Shutting off the pain
So, ever since, when I do something monstrous to myself, I attempt, like Dr. Gutman, to shut off the pain, with greater and lesser levels of success.
In the above-mentioned instance, for example, when I slammed the extremely enormous steel hammer into poor little knee, I chose to ignore it. I'd say that instead of a five-alarm pain signal, I got probably a three-alarm. Will I slam my kneecap with a hammer? Undoubtedly, but not willingly.
It begs the question, why do we humans do so many things that can cause us pain? We smoke; we drink; we drive too fast. We work on having meticulous lawns and empty gutters risking blisters and falls. We play football and eat fatty foods and use hot sauce on our tacos. We fail to raise the trunk lid high enough, and we wear open-toed shoes.
For heaven's sake, imagine if there were no pain? Why, I'd be walking around with enough Bondo to qualify as a '64 Impala.
God bless Dr. Gutman, wherever he is, and all the yogis who can walk on nails and hot coals. As for me, I need the alarms to keep intact.
murphy@vindy.com