Parenting is like watching a NASCAR wreck on repeat (#24)
I can verify that being a klutz is genetic
Neuroscientists describe something called the “posterior parietal cortex (PPC)” which is essentially the brain’s map of what’s going on around your physical body. Its basic job is to understand where your body is in the space around it, making sure you avoid the sharp corners, the tricky ledges, the other large bodies moving through space.
I’m no neuroscientist but I’ve learned over the years that I was born with a posterior parietal cortex that believes I am a 5’4” gymnast when in fact I am a 6’ tall, nacho eating, bad faller downer who looks up at the uneven bars like they’re an expensive drying rack for my wife’s yoga pants. That’s to say that the mental map my brain creates for my surroundings believes that I can jump farther than I can, fall smoother than possible, and navigate tight areas with aplomb that I do not possess.
I break a lot of shit (bones and chairs).
My high school buddies like to remind me of that time I broke my ankle playing basketball….by myself. Or that time I absolutely destroyed my ankle jumping over the net during a tennis match, requiring reconstructive ankle surgery. Or maaaaaaybe it was that time as an adult I was playing softball and went casually striding into second base not really paying attention as a ball hit me right in the side of the face obliterating my nose (that was a fun trip to the ER). These are but a sample of the maladies that my poorly configured PPC has brought onto me. I just don’t have time to write about falling out of a tree or jumping off of our roof or introducing my middle school football coach to the pink cast covering my broken foot from playing football in my backyard.
My point is that I’ve endured a fair amount of injuries that could have been prevented if my brain mapper was even remotely aware of my space in the universe. And I’m sad to report that this defect is in fact a genetic flaw that can be passed down to your children.
Kids are gonna wreck shit. That is an undeniable fact. Their PPC is so new that it is unaware of gravity, inertia, or any of Newton’s laws of motion. It just assumes the 2 year old body exists on an even plane with no other obstacles. This is why kids are effectively made of jello so they can bounce off things, crash into walls, and do a variety of stunts that barely registers on the richter scale. As my children started to walk, I looked for all the usual things that parents look for. Were they comfortable walking on their own? Could they navigate a room full of obstacles? Was their posterior parietal cortex a new and improved version that let them flow through the universe with relative ease? Or did they inherit my lack of grace?
The first incident that tipped me off to the latter explanation for our oldest happened when she was barely 18 months old. She had just started to “run”, and by that I mean she was moving faster than walking but not quite moving at Carl Lewis speed. I was prepping a bath for her and she was at the end of a hallway. I motioned for her to run to me and she did with a big grin. I could see her running in slow motion, arms swinging wildly and feet moving clumsily like they do as toddlers. She was about 2 or 3 feet away from me when I went to reach for her. To catch her and drop her into the tub with a big, fun splash. Instead she tripped on the bath mat and went face first into the side of the tub. She chipped her two front teeth, beginning a long list of clumsy unfortunate accidents.
About a month ago she and I were in our kitchen at home when I asked her to run upstairs to get a sweatshirt. She turned and started to haul some serious ass up to her room but her brain mapper was apparently on vacation and failed to alert her to the wall DIRECTLY BEHIND HER. She crashed into it like Darrel Waltrip smashing into turn 3 at Daytona (I don’t really know anything about NASCAR so let’s just pretend this sounds right). She collapsed onto the floor, flailing, wondering why the wall would just be there for her to run into. What nerve!
Then there was the great “I didn’t see the enormous planter sitting there” incident that nearly knocked out half of her teeth situation that happened a few weeks ago. It had already been a big day for her in losing body parts. She lost her first tooth at school! “I think I swallowed it during lunch” was the response when I asked where this critical relic was. She was extremely concerned the tooth fairy was not going to visit her without the tooth but I managed to convince her that the tooth fairy, much like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and all the other childhood mythological characters, has mystical powers to know that she needed to pay young Lily a visit. Just as soon as I finished restoring her faith in the Tooth Fairy, Lily tripped and fell face first into an empty planter. Her knees hit the front edge causing the planter to tip over just as her face made contact with the opposite edge. If it weren’t my child I would have thought it was a pratfall or a stunt. It looked comical. Until I pulled back the mask she was conveniently wearing to reveal a face full of blood and at least 3 new loose teeth. Side note: did you know that a mask not only helps prevent the spread of a deadly airborne virus but also keeps people from freaking out at the sight of a 5 year old who looks like she was hit in the face with a baseball bat?
To further prove the wackiness of how genes are passed from parent to child, our youngest, Nora, seems to exhibit none of these same tendencies that the oldest exhibits. There have been significantly fewer scraped knees, wall crashes, planter intercepts, etc, etc. The worst thing that’s seemed to have happened to her is she went out scooting barefoot and thought it would be a good idea to user her bare foot as a brake. The enormous blister / road rash she developed was kind of a bummer but at least it was not a sign that her brain mapper was amiss. It was just a sign that like most 2 year olds she has no use for shoes.
All of this is to say our body’s relationship to the space around it is a weird one. For some of us, we glide through life easily sidestepping the potholes (and the planters) as if we always knew they were there. For others, like my oldest and me, we find every goddamn pothole, every funny little curb, and every tree with a limb ready to fall out from under us. But I prefer to think it makes life a little more interesting. And if nothing else, it always makes for a good story.