Motion in the Ocean

Jack has a very distinct walk. In fact, calling it a walk is a little misleading, because out of all of the ways that he propels his Pinocchio-like body forward, hardly any of them constitute what one normally considers a "walk." In fact, when you first see Jack approaching, you would probably think: "Oooh, a very strange child is coming towards me." And you'd be right.

Ever since he began walking, at 11 months, he was a tip-toer. He gamboled around on the tips of his feet until around 2 when he finally began to engage a gear other than Weird. Now he lopes, he scoots, he bounces, he twirls, but he rarely ever just walks. This is adorable until you really need to go somewhere, OR you are in public trying to avoid stares. (As you can guess, the latter is an impossibility for any member of this family--unless they are in a room full of deaf and blind folks.)

Jack is starting T-Ball in a few weeks, and I've been trying to coach him on running. When Jack tries to run he looks like a large, white tumbleweed being blown by a haphazard wind. I made the mistake of explaining, as my soccer coach did, the idea of "cheek-to-cheek" running. The words had barely escaped my lips when I realized what a fatal error I had made. Jack was rapidly tapping both of his cheeks (the face ones) and bouncing in place. As I tried to explain that you also have cheeks on your rear, Jack insisted on seeing them.

"You know what they look like," I told him. "There's a crack between them!"

"CRACK!" he squealed. "I need to check this out."

So inside we went, to use the bathroom mirror so that I could demonstrate to Jack that he did indeed have two separate "cheeks" on his backside.

Eager to get him back outside lest this anatomy lesson stray to darker subjects, I carried him through the house, explaining on the way that if you pumped your arms, moving one hand from your face cheek to your rear cheek, as you ran, you could go faster.

Now picture in your mind a large-headed, very verbal young boy trying to implement my directions of cheek-to-cheek running. Got it? I guarantee you what I witnessed was 53x funnier than that. Needless to say we didn't actually get to any running at all, but we did achieve our signature fail-laugh, which is what I'm usually after anyway.