I Said GO LEFT! And Ginger Footed Walking

Have you ever gotten a shopping cart at the grocery store that, no matter how hard you try to make it go the way you want, it just down right REFUSES to go in the direction you want it to go? Your favorite brand of cereal is in isle 3, but you need to turn left to go down that isle, but the cart has this personal vendetta against you and locks its wheels, forcing you to have to actually PICK IT UP in order to make that turn. Sometimes, my body is that malfunctioning grocery cart. Recently there have been times where I have wanted to go left and I’m telling my body to head in that direction, but my blasted brain screws up the signals and I end up going right, half of the time looking like I’m hopping on one foot or a little tipsy. One time, I was getting up from the couch and, keep in mind, it’s a laborious process, I was trying to get up to go to the kitchen which is to the left, well, I went stumbling—quite quickly, actually—in the opposite direction, nearly falling flat on this gorgeous face that God gave me (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA)! It totally freaked my mom out, but I told her that I had absolutely no control over what the heck my body was doing!

The best method I have discovered for myself—which I TOTALLY abort when I’m in public because I don’t want them to think I’m a few slices short of a loaf—is by doing something very akin to a crab walk. Think Axl Rose in “Welcome to the Jungle” minus the whole body being involved. I just kind of side step my way, slowly, through the house. Sometime I adopt something similar to a prissy, upscale Manhattan woman’s walk, with my hands out “daintily” at my sides—they’re really acting as balancers—and prissy-woman walk my way through the house. Now, everyone that knows me—and you don’t even have to know me all that well to realize this—I am just about the furthest that you can be from a prissy woman. I prefer dirt and scrapes to make-up and facials, it’s just how I’m wired, but when I bust out my Manhattan walk all preferences are thrown out the window and I make my way, gingerly, wherever it is that I am trying to make it to.

So, if you happen to be so “lucky” to fall ill with this vertigo/migraine/ear infection stuff and need a lesson on making your way through your house semi-successfully, I am your woman!