That Awkward Moment When Your Body Betrays You

I have learned in life that there are going to be times when your body betrays you.  There are going to be those awkward moments when you want it to do something, but it decides that it's just not having any part of your plans.  Depending on what it is that you do in life, you may experience this betrayal in various ways, but at some point you will experience it.  I'm sure that it has to be a universal truth.  

I'm going to share with you a few laughable moments where my body has betrayed me.  

To begin, you need context.  I have Cerebral Palsy.  This has taught me that my body is extremely creative in coming up with new ways to make my life interesting.  I've learned that when I encounter new people, it's probably one of the first things that I should tell them...you know, get the elephant out of the room.  I've also learned that it's fun if you can do it in such a way as to surprise them, like saying "I'm not smashed right now, I just have Cerebral Palsy."  Basically, it's not going to affect your life much if you know me.  If you're walking with me somewhere and we encounter stairs, it's polite that you offer me the side with the handrail...or if there is no handrail and I know you well, a shoulder or arm to use as one is also appreciated.  If you're my best friend and you know how to read me, you're also allowed to offer me help if you see that my body is in the process of betraying me.  Other than that, you're good.  

One of the particularly annoying (and sometimes hysterical) "symptoms" (side-effects?  I don't know.) of CP is what I call "shaky hands".  This means that my hands (and actually my entire body but it's only visible in my hands really) trembles...sometimes not much, but sometimes I could make Jiffy Pop like a pro on the stove without even trying.

These stories are about how my body betrayed me with the "shaky hands".  (By the way, it's more than OK to laugh...I laugh about it.)

1.  Please don't fail me, I promise I passed kindergarten:

So the problem with shaky hands is that they're completely unpredictable and can strike at any moment.  Usually their favorite moments are precisely when you're going to be doing something where someone is going to notice that you're uncontrollably shaking...or that you can't perform fine motor skills.  

You can imagine, then, the horror I experienced while I'm defending the first chapter of my dissertation and they get started...and I was supposed to take notes.

I could barely hold a pencil, much less imagine how I was going to write, but I was determined.  I summoned up all my will and told my hand to behave.  I told it that we were going to write words on the paper.  In fact, I put so much energy to talking to my hand, that I could hardly pay attention to what anyone was saying.  I managed to scribble out some illegible words, and then I noticed my director just staring at me...or rather at my hand.  Great.  That helps.

I realized how ridiculous this must look.  I have written a chapter that four great academic minds are complimenting and I cannot write any better than a one year old.  I panicked...were they going to fail me because I appeared to lack the basic skills of a small child?  What were they thinking?  At first I considered taking notes with my mouth.  I've never tried to write with my mouth before, but it couldn't have been any worse or looked any more bizarre to them than what was taking place.

Finally, I pretended that I was done taking notes.  I put the pencil down, put my hands in my lap, and tried to avoid using them for the rest of the meeting.  Luckily they didn't fail me just because of my lack of motor skills...but I'm sure it gave them something to talk about.

2.  I love Chinese food!

I love Chinese food, especially in leftover form.  It's way better as a leftover than it is when you first get it, kind of like Italian food.  

One day a friend of mine is visiting and we're sitting down to have Chinese food.  This friend, luckily, was well seasoned to shaky hands and therefore they didn't need any explanation as to why my hands were shaking.  

I pick up my fork, dig into my rice, and before the fork can make it to my mouth, all the rice had been shaken off.  So for a little while I ate the chicken.  I could stab that.  

But it made me sad, because I loved the rice most of all and really wanted it.  So then I got a great idea.  A spoon!  I was so thrilled because even though some of the rice shook off the spoon, a lot of it made it my mouth.  

But then there was another problem...the chicken, when scooped up on the spoon inevitably shook off...

No problem.  Just use both.  Luckily my friend didn't bat an eye at the fact that I ate the rest of my meal alternating between a fork and a spoon.  She's lucky that worked because I was seriously considering just going at it pig trough style...or maybe going full caveman and eating it all with my hands.  

And people wonder why I don't know how to use chopsticks...

(Yes, I'm fully aware that the silverware pictured looks like it got run over, but that's the best I could do.)

3.  Sometimes you just need coffee:

I really need coffee in the morning.  I am not human until I've had it.  The problem is that with shaky hands, doing things like pouring liquid from one container to another or even moving cups/bowls full of liquid can be pretty messy...extremely messy in fact.

Getting coffee grounds from the jar to the coffee cup is no exception to this.  They go everywhere. I've been grumpy enough in the morning that I've actually considered just taking the coffee jar and pouring it directly into my cup...no measuring, nothing.  It would be the best plan...but the coffee would probably kill me.  

So here's how it goes on a typical shaky hands morning.  I put the coffee cup on the counter and we have a staring match.  I get a spoon and the jar out.  First I'll try to be all cool about it and put the spoon in the jar and then very, very carefully...shake coffee grounds all over the counter.  I'll usually do that once or twice.

Then there's another tactic:  The quick transfer.  This one is great.  This is where you hover the jar over the coffee cup with the idea that you can quickly remove the spoon and drop the grounds directly into the cup.  It's a good idea.  Usually it turns out more along the lines of remove the spoon, drop most of the crystals all around the cup, and get a little into the cup.

If you repeat this practice enough, though, you'll eventually get enough in the cup...and you'll have a great big mess to clean up...after you finish your coffee of course.  

So there you have it.  When you're life fails you, and it will happen at some point if it hasn't happened yet, as  annoying as it may be, try to laugh at it and figure out an alternative.  Sometimes you have to be very creative, but eventually you'll figure out some way around it.  

The Time I Learned I Couldn't Climb A Fence

The Time I Learned I Couldn't Climb A Fence

Everyone has seen people climbing fences on television and it looks like there could be nothing more simple in the world.  People are like Spiderman in the movies.  They see a fifty foot fence and they're over it in three seconds flat.  I had never climbed a fence in my life, but I was certain that I could do it if I ever needed to.  I found out one night, that I was wrong.

I was dog sitting for my dad and his wife.  It was cold and rainy.  It was almost time for the Beasties to go out for the night and I surveyed the back yard to make sure everything was ready for them to be comfortable and happy for the evening.  I realized that Hyper Beastie had drug the blankets out of the dog houses, so I thought that the proper thing to do would be to put them back in the doghouses so that the Beasties would be warm and happy.  

I slipped out of the house without my jacket, because I was only going to be out there for a minute.  I left the Beasties in the house and left the door cracked.  I made one fatal mistake, though, I didn't check to see if the door was locked.  As soon as I was crawling around inside doghouse number one, I heard the overexcited Beasties jumping around in the kitchen with excitement because they knew I was outside.  Then I heard one of the Beasties bang the door shut.  When I tried to get in, the door was locked.  So here I was, stuck outside in the cold and the rain, with no jacket and no cell phone.  What's worse is that the backyard is fenced in and the fence was locked.    For a moment I became depressed.  I felt like I was in a really sad movie.  I was in prison and I was going to die in the backyard and no one was going to find me for days.  

Then I had an idea.  I would just climb the fence.  Simple enough.  I'd hop right over it and be free in  no time.  So I tried to climb it, and that's the moment I realized that I couldn't climb a fence.  I couldn't even get off the ground.  I was going to have to be creative.  

So in the dark (and deathly afraid of spiders), I tried to find a solution to the problem.  Suddenly I had a great idea.  On the porch there were several lawn chairs, the kind that have the plastic straps across the seat and normally have cushions in them.  These didn't have cushions, though, but I still thought they would work for my plan.  

I put one chair on each side of the fence and began my great escape.  The goal was to balance on the strap on one chair, throw my leg over the fence and then climb onto the other chair.  The end result would land me in the front yard.  From there I could simply go in the house because the front door was open.  It was an ingenious plan and I was more than a little proud of my reasoning skills.  So I started the great escape. 

And it would have worked...

Except there was one fatal flaw.  I didn't know that these particular lawn chairs were stacked up the way they were because they were old, and rotting, and needed to be thrown out.  I got as far as throwing one leg over the fence and searching for the other chair with my foot when the strap from the chair I was standing on snapped and I fell.  

The cruel irony of the situation was that if I was going to fall off the fence it wouldn't have been so bad if I had fallen into freedom, but I didn't, I fell back into captivity.  So there I was, lying in the mud, in the cold, and in the rain.  I had fallen through the chair, the fence had scraped my leg on the way down, my pants leg was stuck to the top of the fence, and I was still in the back yard.  

I did what any reasonable person would do.  I cried and tried to come to terms with the fact that this was likely how I was going to die.  

When I finished indulging in self pity about my hopeless, miserable situation, I had another idea.  I only wish it had been the first idea.  I just started yelling at the neighbor's dog, making it really annoyed with me so it would bark.  

"Bark, you dog you, bark!"  

And it did bark.  It barked so much the neighbor came out, and when she came out I started yelling at her to come over.  When she did, I explained my situation and she very kindly went through the house and let me in the back door.  The Beasties, of course, were not apologetic and seemed like they didn't really care about my suffering at all.

Now I never go out of that door without unlocking it...and I've learned that climbing fences is nothing like you see it in the movies.

About Me and This Blog

Hi there.  This is me and my cat Gus.  

Ok, so that's not really what we look like, but I'm not an artist.   I have way more hair than that and I'm generally dressed.  You get the picture.  

So for ages people on the grand Book of Faces have been telling me that I should write a book about my life.  I have never really been sure of what to do with that.  You see, my life is pretty boring...but then again it's not.  

I'm a professor.  

What that essentially means is that I get paid very little money to hold students hostage in a room and torture them on an hourly basis with information that they don't care about and activities that they don't want to do.  It also means that I get an entirely new cast of characters in my life each semester.  Some of the experiences are good, but some of them leave me questioning most of my major life choices.  

I'm also a grad student.  

This means that I have no real life.  Everything I do revolves around some book or a stack of papers.  If I'm not reading or writing, I'm grading.  If I'm not doing any of these things then I'm probably feeling guilty about it. 

Other than that, the cast of my life is made up of the people that I work with in the great ivory tower of education, the never ending cast of crazy neighbors that move in and out of the three story apartment building I call home, some really great friends that I have made along my journey through life, and a loving (and sometimes crazy) family.

I've been described as weird, crazy, clumsy, clueless, and a whole slew of other things.  Most of these are probably correct.  

What I have learned along the way, though, is that you have to learn to laugh at yourself and laugh at the situations  you find yourself in.  Nobody makes it out alive so what's important is to just love each and every part of the journey for what you can find in it to be thankful for.  Laughter is truly the best medicine and nearly everything can be funny if you just adjust your perspective.  That's what I'm going to try to do.  I'm going to just tell you the everyday little stories and hopefully by laughing at myself you'll get a little giggle for your day.

I'll try to post regularly, but I don't know how regularly.  I hope you enjoy the little things as much as I do!  

Please note that, with the exception of Gus, I won't be using anyone's real name.