Thinking On My Feet

by John Christmann

The other day my youngest son was reading a book on dinosaurs when he made an important pronouncement. “I have two brains,” he said, as if telling the world he had just discovered a cure for cancer. I let the paper I was reading drop into my lap and looked at him attentively, waiting for a punch line. He went on. “One controls my head, the other controls my feet.”

I am reasonably sure that this is medically impossible, yet there is something compelling about his argument. It certainly explains all the bruises on his shins.

You see, my son has difficulty negotiating objects that are in close proximity of his body. He often trips over unseen obstacles and careens off of hard objects. Like the ground. His older brother puts it another way. “What a klutz!” he says, rolling his eyes whenever his little brother runs into a door way or bashes his knee climbing into bed. Whatever the label, my youngest seems to crash a lot.

When we first noticed this trend, my wife and I became concerned. After one-too-many tumbles down the stairs, we wondered whether he was lacking coordination, or something more substantial, like common sense. Maybe he was suffering from some neurological disorder. Or maybe we were just heaping our own neuroses at his chaotic feet. But in lieu of ordering a CAT scan of his brain, we opted to just let him be himself. We pick him up when he falls down, bandage his kneecaps, and make sure he never runs with scissors.

Nevertheless, I still worry that my son might be a synapse or two shy of completing a degree in gross motor skills, especially when he trips over the door mat every time he leaves the house. So I was relieved to understand that he is functioning with two brains. It explains a lot—it can’t be easy for a boy to maneuver in the world when he is simultaneously headstrong and foot strong.

Of course, living a life with two brains will be present some unique problems. How will he ever agree on what socks to wear? Will he be able to handle two sets of homework assignments? What if his head gets into Harvard but his feet don’t? Or what happens if his feet want to marry a podiatrist and his head a lawyer? And then every parent’s nightmare: which brain will be in control of the car when he starts to drive?

Certainly playing sports will be difficult. I can see him on the baseball field, hitting a line drive double and tripping over first base. While the other parents snigger behind their polite nods at his fine hit, I stand up in the bleachers and yell proudly, “Atta boy, son. Atta boy, son.” I say it twice so his feet don’t get discouraged. My son waves to me from first base, before he trips again over his shoe laces. I swivel around to the parents surrounding me and smugly say, “He has two brains you know.”

I chuckle to myself. My son doesn’t have two brains. Nor does he have neurological problems. He doesn’t even have two left feet. He is just a kid that is growing into his body. I know this to be true because I carry a scar that tells of a time when euphemisms like “accident prone” deluded kids like me into believing that clumsiness had something to do with bad luck. The scar is on my forehead. I earned it when I was seven, running out the back door to play. The door was closed, but it didn’t much matter. I tripped before I reached it and crashed head long into a nearby umbrella stand. “Where is your brain?” my Mom asked as she drove me to the hospital. I didn’t have an answer. Neither did my feet.

As I grew I became a little more coordinated and eventually earned enough confidence to play baseball and even chew gum at the same time, though I was not very good at either. To compensate for my anemic athletic skills, I took up swimming so my feet wouldn’t have to participate much in decision making. But eventually my feet and my head started to work more as a team. I even survived my teenage years in an automobile with only a few minor dings to my Dad’s insurance rate. And now my feet are quite happy to go where my head tells them to go, even though they still get really confused on a basketball court and sometimes move too slowly when, say, they are requested to go shopping.

I know that my son has one brain, and it is a really good one. His feet will catch up with his head one day. But I will still worry. Like any parent, I don’t want my children to fall behind or to feel hobbled by short comings. I want them to skip through life unencumbered by fear, doubt, or worries that their shoelaces are untied. Above all, I want them to be safe along the way.

I motion my son over and he nimbly climbs in my lap. I rub his head and whisper into his ear, “Don’t tell your feet, but I think I like the brain up here best.” He gives me a hug then hops down and runs pell-mell out of the room, like a dog on a hard wood floor. From the other room I hear a loud crash. “I’m OK,“ he calls out from across the house.

My head knows this to be true. But I am up on my feet, all the same.