I am an extremely accident prone person. So I tend to assess damage to myself as a matter of course: head – attached; fingers – functional; bruises – minimal; etc. but lately I can’t help but quantify the damage. For instance my teeth are worth thousands of dollars. Ish. A good chunk of that was the braces, but the rest was actually the consequence of a few of the various accidents I’ve already discussed. Not my best moments. And I now have my dentist’s home phone number, but it makes those times I open the car door into my head that much more upsetting.

And then there’s my brain to consider. I’m not entirely sure I was using it when I decided to go to a private university but that definitely upped the value into the tens of thousands. Suddenly that bump on my head is not only stupid, but downright fiscally irresponsible. I should be wearing a helmet at all times with alarms and lasers and things. But I like playing with my hair too much so that isn’t going to happen.

Valuing your life and the things you have and the things you do are all good and important, but assessing their monetary value is going to drive you insane. Bumps and bruises happen, both literally and metaphorically, but they heal and we’re either as good as new or we’ve learned something (remove head from under coffee table before standing up). It’s really hard to maintain the innocence of walking straight into things when you know there are going to be unyielding, fast-moving projectiles heading in our direction every so often, but I almost always think it’s worth it and that dizziness wears off in a minute or two.

Bashing yourself in the head with a car door, or a table, or a stapler (don’t ask) is definitely a bad thing, for the record, but is sometimes unavoidable.