Walking

Until recently, I had not noticed the quantity of people that walked with a limp or a “hitch”.  I remember Don Meredith of Dallas football fame and Monday Night Football used to call it a “hitch in his gitalong”.  My hitch is caused by some malfunction in my ankle causing pain enough to favor that step.  The pain goes away after about twenty steps and then I resume my slouched amble.  My pace is slow compared to most walkers.  I can walk three miles slower than most and I still get there when I need to be there.  I never could understand people walking in a hurry all the time.  I have been a lot of places and in a retrospective glance; there was not much reason to get there quickly for any of them.    

There are some walkers that shift all their weight to one leg or the other in an exaggerated fashion causing them to wobble.  There are those that must have extremely tight hamstrings or a sphincter problem because they take very short strides and hardly get anywhere with each step.  Some take much larger steps than needed causing a bobbing sort of motion reminiscent of John Cleese and the Silly Walk.  An interesting gait is from the mostly men that had a crib rail too high when they were babies and they rise up on their toes with each step.

I think that most hitches are a physical problem related to weight or injury.  There are some that are pure “style”.  I have twice seen a man with a walking style I can only describe as Osmosis in fine clothing. He is a tall man of probably six and one half feet.  He has a large frame without fat.  I am trying to figure out why he was not a professional athlete with a physique like his.  This man is finely dressed in expensive shirt, pants, cowboy boots and topped with a fine beaver felt hat.    His tanned skin is accentuated by the perfectly sized brass belt buckle.   The amount of starch required to keep those creases razor sharp required a bushel of taters.  His stride is probably a normal distance for a large strong man.  The stride is extremely slow, almost intentional.  Maybe twice as slow as a normal stride yet because of his size he is actually moving quite fast. His arm swing is also slow to match his gait as required by physics.  The heel of his boot plants quietly on the tile and his foot rolls forward onto his toes.  My Holy Father in Heaven, he has take only one step in the time it took you to read this paragraph.  His movement is addictive to the eyes yet painful to watch.  With his posture very straight and upright, he moves seemingly effortlessly through the hallways look forward at a definite end.  I followed him in astonishment until he entered the restroom and where I dare not linger.  I saw him a few days later gliding out of the building heading for the parking lot without a hitch. 

My friend Bob tells me that as a teenager, he and the boys worked on their “walks”.   I always thought he was an arrogant dil-hole but it was just his walk. I think about walking differently and I watch more carefully.  It can be an old lady with a painful scoliosis walker aided stride or a young lady with a nice swish of her behind or maybe an old man with the Tim Conway shuffle but now I look deeper for a meaning buried inside the walk.