It’s amazing what you can do on your knees.
Crutches, you see, are handy, but awkward. For short trips — say, to the opposite side of the room and back — pulling yourself up and balancing takes longer than the trip itself. Knee-walking and crawling take far less effort and time.
And so, having broken my heel bone, I’m much into crawling these days. I crawled around on the floor yesterday, installing Tivos. I occasionally knee-walk or crawl to the kitchen for a soda. I crutch my way slowly upstairs, but I crawl (or butt-drag) myself down the stairs, because, since falling down the stairs, I am more than a little climacophobic.
Climacophobia, by the way, is the fear of falling down the stairs.
It’s all very humbling. It’s hard, for example, to think too highly of yourself when you’re crawling around on a bathroom floor.
I am not, however, glum about it. I’ve had my Black Period, complete with a pity party and ample sobbing. (“I can’t even bathe myself! Wah!”)
Now I’m in the “suck it up” phase … more tolerable for everyone, including me. My upper lip is stiff. My outlook is positive. I have plans within plans within plans.
So if you see a pale, fat, red-faced man crawling past you at the Shop-N-Save, don’t panic. It’s not a roly-poly Little Person from Ireland.
It’s just me.
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