Rythmically Challenged.

I'm not sure when I developed this condition, but I think it's inherited.  I never knew what it was called until recently. Let me tell you about it.

When I was a kid I was always the last one picked for the ball team.  Something to do with coordination. I don't have unusually large feet, but I seem to stumble over them.  I don't really feel alive if I don't have some kind of abrasion on my body somewhere. (Daddy was like that too.) I was never very good with hammers.  Actually, a couple of fingers on my left hand are flatter than those of my right. I would sometimes manage to hit the wrong nail.
I had great difficulty in the Navy boot camp.  We had to march a lot. But when the company had competition drill, I was always sent to sick bay. My company commander would tell me to use my imagination to stay at sick bay until competition drill was over. It is a Navy requirement that a sailor be able to swim.  Swimming requires that limbs be moved in some sort of synchronization.   I had great difficulty with that. Later in life I realized that part of my problem was that I have difficulty determining left from right.  Many times I have given directions to someone who would never reach their destination. Well, let's just say that I should not have been critical of their getting lost.

All of these things really culminated when I, my wife, and my nephew were attending one of Ann Caldwell's Gullah gospel services at the Circular Congregational Church on Meeting Street during one of Charleston's many festivals. Ann was tremendous in showing the uninformed what a church service  of the Carolina low country is really like. She led us through the "Amen" responses and other responses and then  the gospel shuffle. The shuffle goes like this.  The parishioners hold hands and sway left and right to the rhythm of the music. There were about twenty-five people in our row, and twenty-four were swaying to the right, but one was trying to sway to the left.  Guess who?  Ms. Caldwell remarked that I was "rhythmically challenged".  And that was the first time I ever knew exactly what my condition was.

Through the years I've learned to live with my condition though. And there was that one time I really overcame it.  I think it was sometime in the eighties, when I was a U.S. Army reservist.  We were at Fort Gordon, Georgia, for our annual two weeks training.  Part of that training was a certain physical fitness test requiring running. We were finishing the last part of a run, and the whole company was running, actually more like jogging. We were all in sync, in step, one hundred left feet hitting the ground together followed by one hundred right feet hitting the ground together. and mine was one of them.  I was in step. Me. That day, for a few minutes in the Georgia sun, I overcame my handicap.  And it felt good!