Anyway, now I'm going to do a complete 180 and talk about my lovely self.
When I wake up in the morning, I yawn, stretch, pat around for my glasses (I find my glasses by touch since I can't actually see where my glasses are without the use of... my glasses), and crawl out of bed. A few events then occur, sometimes in the same order, often every day.
1. I put my feet on the floor.
2. My legs feel stiff from sleeping for eight hours.
3. My legs protest their stiffness and refuse to do what they should be doing.
4. I stumble across the bedroom floor.
5. I steer myself towards the bedroom door.
6. I misjudge the width of the bedroom door and smack into the side of the door.
7. In my annoyance, I say things that I cannot repeat on a family-friendly blog such as this.
8. Thus bruised, I continue down the stairs towards the kitchen.
9. I take my meds off the counter.
10. I open the meds.
11. I take a pill out of the container.
12. The pill leaps from my fingers onto the floor.
13. I bend down and pick up the pill.
14. The pill leaps from my fingers onto the floor.
15. In my annoyance, I say things that I cannot repeat on a family-friendly blog such as this.
16. I bend down and pick up the pill.
17. I successfully put the pill into my mouth and swallow.
18. I toddle over to the refrigerator.
19. I take out the iced tea and put it on the counter.
20. I pull off the bottle cap.
21. The cap leaps from my fingers onto the floor.
22. In my annoyance, I say things that I cannot repeat on a family-friendly blog such as this.
23. I bend down and pick up the bottle cap.
24. I pour myself a glass of iced tea.
25. I take a long swig of iced tea.
26. I accidentally pour a third of the glass on my pajama top.
27. In my annoyance, I say things that I cannot repeat on a family-friendly blog such as this.
28. I get a paper towel and clean up my mess.
29. I start to head back upstairs to take a shower.
30. I trip and fall over my slippers and crash on the stairs, bruising my knee in the process.
As it has been amply demonstrated above, one of Grace's many failures as an individual is her total lack of motor skills. My motor skills are awful. I break things. I drop things. I crack things. I smash things. And at the end of the day, I roll up my pants to count my bruises.
I honestly don't remember having motor issues to this extent when I was younger. Well, I do, but it was mostly gross motor and perceptual motor stuff. When I took karate, for instance, it was difficult for me to see someone performing a new punch or kick and then do it myself. My instructors told me for years and years and years that I needed to turn my foot to the side when I did a roundhouse kick, and for years and years and years I tried unsuccessfully to do just that. It wasn't until somebody actually put my foot in the proper position that I knew what I was supposed to do.
My favorite instance of perceptual and gross motor fail, however, was when I was nine and in 4H. I took a sewing class and actually made my own skirt (don't ask me how). At the end of the class, we all went to the regional 4H show where we wore the clothes we made to a fashion show. For the show, we all had to do a little routine. You know, walk to the front of the stage, twirl, walk to the side of the stage, twirl, that kind of stuff. Yours truly just could not figure out the routine and ended up completing her own specially-tailored routine where she just had to walk forward, twirl, and walk backwards. Oh the shame...
I'm thinking that the reason my motor skills seem to be worse in my twenty-eight year than they were in my eighth year is simply because I'm more active at this point in my life. I have to do things like drive a car, navigate through a supermarket, write papers for class (I don't hold a pencil correctly, either), and... help my students with their own motor skills struggles.
Which brings us back, full circle, to the MDS kids.
Since these children have so many needs, they pretty much need you to do everything for them. Remember, a lot of these kids have the cognitive ability of about a six-month-old... but they're actually eight or ten or twelve years old. And what do you do in school when you're in third grade? Yep, you do art projects! So think of asking a six-month-old to do an art project with you. You'd have to help her hold scissors, cut the paper, hold the glue, squeeze the glue, hold the crayon, color the paper, etc, ad nauseum.
Dan finds my lack of motor skills alternately concerning and hilarious. He says that the thought of me helping special needs students with stuff like art projects can be compared to the maxim of the blind leading the blind. I grudgingly concur.
As you can imagine, one of the few things that I really, really couldn't stand doing when I subbed were those stupid art projects with the MDS kids. My lack of motor skills were on display for all of the hott/previously hott teachers/associates/therapists/ in the room. I had to help kids use adapted scissors. Well, how did the adapted scissors work? Oh, you squeeze them? Shucks, if I squeeze the scissors, nothing happens. Oh wait, I have to squeeze with my fingers, not with my palms. OK, I think I got it now. Alright, now how should I adapt the adapted scissors so that I can hold this child's hands over the scissors while we use the scissors? Crud, we cut in the wrong direction. Crud, we tore the paper. Dang it all. Can we have another piece of paper? Good, great. OK, now we're getting somewhere. We've cut halfway around the circle. Man, my wrist hurts like heck. Ouch. Now my hand is going slightly numb. I wonder if this little guy would like to take a moment's break before we finish the other half of the circle.
Usually I ended up covered in sweat, red-faced, covered in glue or paint, and in pain. I'm not sure whether it is a good or a bad thing that someone usually noticed my pain about three-quarters of the way through and took pity on me... cut the rest of the circle, painted the rest of the paper, what have you.
And this is one of the reasons that being me can just kind of suck sometimes. I'm neither here not there. Let's face it, I get around in life just fine. But heck, I sure do have a lot of doorframe bruises. I fall over my own feet in the mall. (Two days ago, I was at ESU for orientation for the new school year. I was in a small college lecture hall with about 150 people. Totally fell over on my face while walking up the stairs. In front of 150 people.) I'm not weird or different enough to be anything more than weird or different. My weird and different doesn't have a name, and frankly, besides my pencil grip, I don't think my motor issues can really be fixed. It's just a little more of a pain for me to walk through life, and I trip - a lot - along the way.
But this is also one of the reasons I love working with kids with special needs. There are parts of me that I can't really hide or get over, even as a big important adult. I totally get why they don't want to write anything over a sentence, because they're grabbing the pencil with an immature grip, and I know their wrists hurt after a few minutes, just like me. I know why they don't want to play with the shaving cream or the paint or the weird foamy stuff, because it feels weird, and it grosses them out, just like it grosses me out. I get it. And when I need to wrestle my own limitations to help them out with their own limitations, I'll gladly do it, because I get it.
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| This is what Grace probably needed when she was younger. |
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