Growing up, I had no idea what my problem was. I was constantly on the wrong end of things. If I wasn’t banging myself up walking into stationary objects, things were coming out of my mouth that I seemed unable to control. I even managed to get thrown out of Sunday School. The rabbi sent me home with a note for my father. “Your son has no respect for the Torah. Do not send him back.”
Fortunately, the Rabbi did not detail the incident. Maybe it had traumatized him. I remember it as if it happened yesterday.
“What does Tance mit de Torah mean?” The rabbi looked at me – it was my turn.
“Uh … dance … uh … I know this, really … dance with the … uh… dance with the toilet?” It was an honest mistake. You believe that, don’t you? I’m sure my father would have.
“You’re careless,“ my father would say as my big toe throbbed after stubbing it on the kitchen counter. There was not a day that passed that I did not injure myself.
My mother had a completely different take on the problem. “He’s not careless, he’s a klutz.” I liked the sound of “careless” better. If you grew up in a Jewish family, you learned that the term “klutz” was reserved for clowns or idiots. Thankfully, I was just a teenager when this behavior started, and I had reason to hope that I would eventually grow out of it. By the time I reached my 30s, though, my right big toe had doubled in size and I finally accepted the fact that I was doomed to destroy my own body, slowly and painfully.
Yesterday was an average day for me. I slammed my knee into the handle of a cabinet, walked into a wall on the way to the bathroom and stubbed my toe for the 1,000th time. Yet these are only minor examples of the problem that result in nothing more that temporary pain. There are far more serious symptoms that can strike at any time.
A few years ago, a friend advised me to see a neurologist. I resisted. “I’m a klutz,” I said, and he’s not going to find anything in my brain.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” he said with a straight face, but I wasn’t in the mood for his humor. After a few days of bashing myself around, I relented and made an appointment. The neurologist put me through a series of tests, including an EEG.
“Well, if you are a klutz, as you say, it is not neurological,” he finally pronounced.
“But it has to be.” I was crestfallen and desperately wanted a diagnosis, some reason that would explain my problem and allow for a possible cure.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Sixty-one,” I replied, “why do you ask?”
“From what I can see, you are lucky to be alive.”
How nice. A neurologist with a sick sense of humor. That was just what I needed. Nonetheless, I wasn’t ready to give up. I went to a hypnotist. He was charging me $120, so I played along even though I was never for a second in any kind of hypnotic state. It figured.
You’ve got to understand; being a klutz is a curse. Things like dating become sick comedies. I have had women walk out on me mid-meal, as wine dripped from the edge of the table. On one date, a fork mysteriously flew out of my hand and impaled itself in my date’s hairdo. To the untrained eye, it looks like a poltergeist is present. Anything in my hand is a potential weapon. At Stewart’s one day, I was shaking my asthma inhaler when it suddenly flew across the store, hitting a Hyde Park policeman in the back. He gave me “that” look, which means something I cannot repeat in this column. Things didn’t get any better when I left the store. It was icy, and as I opened the car door I slipped, somehow managing to slide underneath my car. The same cop was there for that, too, and I had to submit to an on-the-spot sobriety test.
There are too many incidents to tell about here. Suffice it to say that I have walked into parking meters, telephone poles and countless other stationary objects that normal people avoid. I have numerous poltergeist experiences, like the night an open bottle of pills flew out of my hand. I discovered some of them the next day in my shoe.
The best incident occurred with my first wife. We were in a diner. I shook a bottle of catsup, unaware that the cap was not screwed on. The entire contents of the bottle shot across the table, splattering my poor wife with that blood-red substance.
The manager must have thought I shot her, because he called 911 and yelled for everyone to hit the floor. I tried to explain what really happened, that it was not blood, but catsup, but he refused to taste it, and his response to my request made things worse.
“He’s a madman, he wants me to taste the blood!” Of course, it didn’t help that my wife was white as a ghost and looked dead. I had just ruined her most expensive blouse.
Today, I have learned to live with the condition. I am what I am. In spite of all the pain and humiliation, I am a survivor. I should have been in vaudeville. I could have been famous.