I was lying in bed thinking about a friend who's been sick. And I flashed back to being six or seven. I think my brother and I were suffering the same ailment. Don't recall what it was - might have been chicken pox or something. Our pediatrician wanted to keep an eye on us, so at least once, Dr O'Gara stopped by our house. He had one of those black leather doctor's bags, from which he pulled his stethoscope and tongue depressors and such. He decided we were progressing satisfactorily.
It just struck me how odd this was. Our pediatrician made a house call. And we didn't live next to the Waltons or anything - this was San Francisco. And yeah, it was years ago, but not THAT long ago. I wonder how many other people my age ever got a house call.
I never liked Dr O'Gara much, but I didn't really understand why until recently. Ends up he always had a suspicious eye on me, and really, for good reason. My parents took me in to see him when I was three or four because I kept getting bruises on my shins, and nobody could figure out why. Dr O'Gara thought my parents might be abusing me. (Although why they'd take me in to see the doctor if they were seems counterintuitive.) i told the doctor the truth. Yes, they kinda hurt, but no, I didn't know where they were coming from. It wasn't until weeks later that my parents found the stupid truth. I enjoyed riding my tricycle downhill, but there was no real brake or stopping mechanism. So to stop the trike, I'd put my shins in front of the pedals, letting them smack against them until I came to a stop. It stung a bit but didn't really hurt that much. But why I never equated my unorthodox braking system with the "mysterious bruising" on my shins in beyond me. Early signs of gargoyle cluelessness.
I don't know if the doctor really believed this. It DOES seem damn stupid, in retrospect. And as a clumsy child in general, I usually had some sort of other "owie" that the doctor wondered might have been caused by my parents. He finally decided to confront my parents about it. I'm not sure if he was going to simply accuse them of it, or simply "lay out his concerns". But once he had us there, he asked me o go back and wait in the waiting room. I said OK, got up, and proceeded to walk into the door frame. At which point the doctor suddenly thought "Wait - maybe this kid really IS just clumsy as fuck."
So instead of being put into foster care or whatever, they sent me to "get tested". They took me to this industrial complex, put me in a room behind some one-way mirror, and had me walk straight lines, spin around, and pick up pencils over and over. Eventually, they came back with their diagnosis. "Lex has some significant problems with spatial relationships and hand-eye coordination. That said, he's built up an impressive array and variety of compensatory practices in his few years, so that the problems are actually somewhat minimal. We can train him if you wish, but it would mean breaking down everything he built up first, so his minor problems would probably get a lot worse before they got better. It may be best to let him continue compensating on his own." My parents agreed with that assessment.
I sometimes wonder how "fucked up" I am. Not in a bad way, just exactly how off my cognitive skills really are. And how much I'm compensating for them. I'm assuming this is why I slow down at doorways, and why I deliberately let my shoulder or arm brush the walls of corridors from time to time - just gotta find out where the walls are, yo. Is this why, when my glasses start falling off my face, I spastically fling them across the room? An inability to bring my hand up quickly but accurately to where I want it to go? In a true emergency, will I run straight into a wall? Did anything positive come out of this "defect"? Am I more laid back about not having an ideal situation, figuring "I'll fumble through", since that's pretty much how I've had to approach 3-D life? Am I OK with not knowing all the answers to stuff because I've grown up knowing that my eyes were only giving me a vague sketch of the story, and being aware that I could sort the rest if I needed to? And why am I so exceptionally prone to daydreaming and limp creativity? God knows the smart thing to do if you're walking into walls on a regular basis is to shut down the creative center so you can focus on where the fuck you're going. But I'm actually more likely to have my head in the clouds now than I was thirty-five years ago. Just a really slow learner? Or are the two things connected? Since I truly can't 100% trust my eyes, have I trained my mind to keep searching for possibilities?
If so, it's worth the bruises and jettisoned glasses. Many times over.
Lex