Dyspraxia, Superpowers and the Doorframes that Bite!

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I am often called clumsy. I have been my whole life. From accidentally kicking over pint glasses to falling off walls, I’ve always been a little bit accident prone. Or was it really an accident?

On the way to the kitchen at around 9:30pm last night to make a cup of tea, I was attacked once again by the door frame. It bit me and I thought I was going to end up with another bruise this morning, but the pink marks from last night have faded. I sure was glad that this recent attack by the doorframe happened on the way to the kitchen this time and not when I had a hot cup of tea in my hand. 

It seems that inanimate objects have it in for dyspraxics. Chairs, doors, tables, doorframes etc they all conspire against us. It was only a few weeks ago that the door handle grabbed me as I tried to walk away. It just didn’t want to let go of me! I am sure that the wall pushed me off when I ended up in hospital getting x-rays on my arm. Fortunately it was only a bruised bone and not broken (though it did still really hurt).

Having spoken to other people with dyspraxia, I know that it’s not just me that has been a victim to these types of attacks. Car doors and windows have also been getting in the act along with steps and doorsteps! The rug in our livingroom has tried to grab me by my ankles a couple of times and the curb along the street from us grabbed my ankle and made me twist it.

My conclusion to this is that these inanimate objects have some sort of magic power, but their strengths comes from stealing superpowers from people with dyspraxia. They’re jealous of our natural occurring superpowers and so make us their prime target! They often talk of liminalities (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) having magical powers, which is why doors seem to be key offenders as well as the edges of tables and chairs.

Liminality: In Places

The spatial dimension of liminality can include specific places, larger zones or areas, or entire countries and larger regions. Liminal places can range from borders and frontiers to no man’s lands and disputed territories, to crossroads to perhaps airports or hotels, which people pass through but do not live in: arguably indeed all ‘romantic travel enacts the three stages that characterize liminality: separation, marginalization, and reaggregation’. In mythology and religion or esoteric lore liminality can include such realms as Purgatory or Da’at, which, as well as signifying liminality, some theologians deny actually existing, making them, in some cases, doubly liminal. “Between-ness” defines these spaces. For a hotel worker (an insider) or a person passing by with disinterest (a total outsider), the hotel would have a very different connotation. To a traveller staying there, the hotel would function as a liminal zone, just as ‘doors and windows and hallways and gates frame…the definitively liminal condition’.

More conventionally, springs, caves, shores, rivers, volcanic calderas – ‘a huge crater of an extinct volcano…[as] another symbol of transcendence’ – fords, passes, crossroads, bridges, and marshes are all liminal: ‘”edges”, borders or faultlines between the legitimate and the illegitimate’. Oedipus (an adoptee and therefore liminal) met his father at the crossroads and killed him; the bluesman Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads, where he is said to have sold his soul. Major transformations occur at crossroads and other liminal places, at least partly because liminality—being so unstable—can pave the way for access to esoteric knowledge or understanding of both sides. Liminality is sacred, alluring, and dangerous.

Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

This magical force is the reason why you’ll find that most dyspraxic people have bruises on their arms or legs. Sometimes we don’t even know how they got there! I had a massive scratch and bruise on my leg last week that I have no idea where it came from. These attacks are so frequent that a bite from a chair or a thump from a table can go unnoticed.

In a way, I do feel sorry for these objects. It must be difficult for them to appreciate just how awesome people with dyspraxia are. Hopefully one day dyspraxics and inanimate objects can live in harmony, but until then we will continue running the risk of being tripped up and assaulted by doors, doorframes, door handles, chairs, tables, worktops, stairs, walls etc.

(Of course this is fictional. Well all except the superpowers of dyspraxics.)