I recently bemoaned my inability to comprehend the movement of objects in space. Any kind of space. The phases of the moon continue to mystify me even though I’ve seen that fat sucker roll around (predictably, according to experts) some 850 times. I have no idea where a ball I’m throwing is going to go. In the space between my ears, I can’t fold up a paper shape into three dimensions. I just get a crumpled wad, a little damp from neuronal exertion.
So I suppose it only makes sense that I cannot reliably maneuver my personal person in space without banging into things.
You know those movies where there’s some velociraptor with an axe stalking through a house and everything depends on the people huddling under the counters being quiet? Well. I’m the one who’s going to move that plot forward.
I prove it to myself every day. Maybe Dave is snoozing and I want to leave the room without waking him up, so I’m creeping around, going about my business and taking care to move objects with care and negotiate corners smoothly, and just as I leave the room I clip the handle of a metal pan and send it clacketing across the floor. I couldn’t do more aural damage with a drum kit.
I have run into walls misjudging where the door-hole is.
None of this makes sense. Dave, who has always been a graceful man, manages to ambulate with the ease and elegance, despite being larger than a human really needs to be (or “regular-sized,” as he puts it). I’ve seen him carry a ladder up a ladder and across a roof and set it up in perfect position first try. I would have taken out a window pane. In fact I’ve seen him take the same ladder through the house and multiple staircases including a spiral staircase, smoothly calculating the corners with an inch to spare, and the ease and fluidity of a construction crane. I can follow him with a two-foot step-stool and create a whole spackle-and-sandpaper situation.
Dave knows where his freakishly extenuated body is in space at all times. I have seen him fall down only a handful of times in 48 years. And he used to drink a lot. Perhaps he has developed this ability because the consequences to succumbing to gravity are more dire for him, but I think he was born with it. He probably shot out the chute, stuck the landing, coiled up the umbilical cord neatly, handed it to the doctor, and made polite inquiry about breakfast.
On the other hand, there is no excuse for me being puzzled as to where my various body parts are at any time. Nothing on me is very far away from anything else on me. It’s a compact arrangement that I should be able to operate with a minimum of disturbance, but I don’t. I blunder around like a fat fly on a windowsill. Bam. Bam. Bam.
I am, however, squishy, close to the ground, and not at all fragile. I’ve got all that in my favor. You do you.
Proprioception… there’s a lot of complicated science around it, but your “ladder through the house” analogy is an absolutely perfect description. Maybe you use all yours for word order?
I have often believed that my general daffiness (so far, not fatal) has to do with my brain being stuffed with metaphors.
We bought a “package” of honeybees, which is one way to start a hive. They come in a wire-framed box about the size of a toaster-oven, weighing 3 pounds and holding around 10,000 bees plus a queen, who rides in a special smaller box inside and has a few attendants.
I was mystified as to how the bees can be weighed, as some were clinging to the sides of the box, some were lying dead on the bottom, and a whole bunch were flying around.
What do they have to do, I wondered aloud to my brainy physicist father, smack the box on the table so that they are ALL on the floor, then weigh it quickly before they have time to come to their senses and get airborne again?
He laughed hilariously. He tried to explain to me that they weigh the same, whether they are flying around or clinging to the sides of the box.
It has something to do with comprehending the weight of objects in space.
You said it!
I’m sorry, it’s hard for me to get all the way through your comment because I’m stuck on the visual of the queen bee riding in a teeny tiny litter with crimson curtains and trimmed in ermine.
I once shot up three inches in three months. (I still have stretch marks on my thighs to prove it.) It took me another three months to get used to where my hands and feet were. But, in the ensuing decades, I have gotten very good at judging distance and size, in spite of the fact that, in my reckless youth, men kept telling me that something was actually eight inches long.
Roxie, you definitely shot up. My mom always told me to say “My feet reach all the way to the ground, what more do yours do?”
I used to have a pretty good sense of direction, but somewhere along the way the words right and left started to sound the same to me.
You need to be a straight-up guy.
I blame being struck by lightning
I tend to focus my gaze right in front of me… which has led to some mishaps. I don’t usually look down. I don’t expect unusual things to be down there. Just a floor or the ground.
For instance, as a teen, visiting my boyfriend’s friend’s home for the first time, I stumbled on one of those little wire fences that people put around their plantings. The wire pierced my leg and I had to get a tetanus shot.
At work, in my 30s, as a server in a hotel/restaurant, a custodian had been cleaning the fireplace in the lobby and left some pointy stuff in front of it, which I didn’t see. I was already upset, as my father (who I didn’t even like) had just died, so as I was walking through the lobby, I fell onto the pointy fireplace stuff… and had to leave work to get…. a tetanus shot.
Same hotel/restaurant: maybe a year later. They didn’t have non-slip mats on the kitchen floor. I was walking through the kitchen, and there was some sort of spillage on the floor. I went tits-up and hit the back of my head. Once again, a doctor visit, only this time for an x-ray instead of a tetanus shot.
And… a few days ago. Paul and I haul our trash to the dump, as trash contractors around here are expensive, and we don’t have that much trash to justify the expense. My first time, as I have to get used to doing this stuff now. I had to back our truck into the space, and I am not good at backing up. There was one of those concrete abutments in the back of the space, and I didn’t want to hit it and do damage to the truck. So I gave it some room. But since it was below my line of vision, I tripped over it, and would have face-planted onto a much larger concrete abutment in front of the dumpster. So I caught myself in time, but jammed my left middle finger into the larger abutment. My drivers side middle finger. I’m tempted to ask for a handicapped sticker, as it is my primary method of conveying annoyance to drivers who cut me off.
We all seem to have a myriad of blind spots whereby we injure ourselves. Except maybe for Dave. He sounds like a gem. I admire his dexterity, especially the part about bringing a ladder up a spiral staircase. Sheeeeet! I can barely WALK up and down a spiral staircase, let alone carry anything while negotiating it! Kudos, Dave!
My friend Linda does a ton of hiking and her feet are not the soundest, and yet as far as I know she never falls down or trips. I remarked on that once, because she sees EVERYTHING from beetles to birds to baubles, and she said she never walks and looks around at the same time. She looks at the ground in front of her and stops when she wants to see things. That literally never occurred to me as a strategy.
Yeah, I should do that, too. I tend to walk briskly, like a New Yorker. And am thinking about things other than what I’m actually doing. Mindfulness is just not in my wheelhouse.
I recommend Johnson floor wax shields for getting around the house. Very smooth and quiet.
Not if you still run into walls.
Fabulous!! And this piece reminds me of my wife; drinking glasses get broken and stuff is knocked off counters regularly. You two should meet.
You aren’t worried about the consequences?
And what’s with the Mary Poppins roof scene? You and Dave?!!
Yes! A staged photograph for a friend’s wedding.
regularly bang into things…..Ditto on proprioception- it is all part of the vestibular system which integrates movement and eyesight with feedback from the inner ear balances and eyes- when that gets messed up all Hell breaks loose- one can’t integrate anything . ask me . actually don’t I sometimes cannot stand still and think at the same time…..
I guess I never listen to my feedback. I know I still blame Dave for breaking a basement window when he was trying to teach me how to throw a softball. He wasn’t anywhere near that window when I threw the ball, but he has really quick reflexes and a mighty long reach. I think he should’ve caught it.
We are sisters separated at birth, Murr. I can trip over an air pocket.