My Left Foot

Where this begins, maybe, is with my left foot, but it's not an inspiring story about a palsied guy who performs creative miracles with a paintbrush grasped between the toes of his left foot. Those stories are part of the literature the able-bodied find inspirational, "If the cripple guy can do that, then I--for sure--can get off my duff and accomplish something." Inspirational? As soon as I began to encounter the stories in junior high Language Arts textbooks, I hated them. Super cripple stories, after reading them, I felt expected to do something extra-ordinary to overcome my limitations, or, perhaps, as compensation, to show myself worthy of the sacred trust given me by my handicap, the duty to provide an inspiration for the able-bodied.

My left foot does not have a full complement of muscles--it is, perhaps, the weakest appendage on my body. I am not possessed of the supernatural character, determination, grit, stubbornness, or whatever it takes to be an inspiration to the able-bodied, and this story is not about overcoming, but about being overcome.

So. My left foot does not have a full complement of muscles. Because of this, taking a step with this foot requires more friction between the sole of the shoe and the floor than is needed by a fully muscled appendage. Most don't realize it, but feet are dynamic. They grab the ground during even the simplest saunter. Toes grip and flex; weight constantly shifts from the heel of the foot, to the side of the foot, to the toes and back. You are walking down the hall, a friend calls from behind, you look over your right shoulder, stop, and turn to answer. You are oblivious, but your left foot has just made a series of complex adjustments carrying your weight, changing your momentum, and balancing it--all without your conscious attention.

My left foot doesn't do that. While I have some flex and control in my ankle and big toe, basically, I lift my foot an inch from the floor and throw it forward by raising and moving my hip. My left foot lands on the floor in the direction I am moving and, if it finds friction, stays where it landed. I push off with my right foot; my weight is carried over my left foot in a kind-of pole vault--like the stiff old days of pole vaulting without the flex and launch of the modern poles--until my right foot lands again and takes my body weight.

Where this now goes is into the fine arts faculty restroom. Down the hall from my classroom, is a small uni-sex restroom with a sink in one corner, mirror over the sink, commode in another corner, drain in the middle of the floor, fire alarm on the wall, and a lock on the doorknob. Added to the lock on the knob is a slide bolt on the door--you raise the little knob, slide the little bar across the door crack into a loop of metal on the facing, and the door is locked, even to someone with a key. This was added after the new fine arts wing was opened and we, through surprise and error. discovered that while a lock in the doorknob keyed to open with faculty room keys kept randomly curious students out, it did not prevent faculty from walking in on each other and, not incidentally, exposing anyone in the restroom--full commode view--to randomly curious eyes, roaming the halls.

One day just before my post-lunch bunch of freshmen arrived for Theatre Arts, I went to the fine arts faculty restroom. Remembering to latch the little bolt, I took care of business, flushed the commode, and began washing my hands in the sink. At that point, if this event had been a movie, there would have been a soundtrack playing that low pitched, steady, tension-building music that lets you know malevolent evil, viscerally manifest is poised to spring from nowhere and gut the clueless innocent. The long, low sounding, bow drawn across upright bass strings would have oozed through the air as the backed up sewage carrying flecks of human feces oozed through the floor drain and slowly spread across the floor to lap at the edge of my left foot.

Focused on the mirror, I was combing my hair, smoothing the wild grey beard hairs into concert with the darker and more sedate ones, admiring my oatmeal colored Orvis travel coat and matching slacks in the mirror. The one-minute bell began ringing. I heard quickened steps outside the door, students sprinting to class, hoping to slip into their seats just before the tardy bell. I lifted my left hip and threw my left foot into the growing pool of effluent, launched my body weight into the pole vault as I turned from the mirror toward the door, and felt my left foot slip wildly away from where it needed to be. It felt like a rubber hose, non-existent, the feeling you get when you put your weight on a leg that's asleep, but without the intense tingle to remind you the leg exists.

Adrenalin kicked in, and as my brain got the alert I was in free fall, time began to crawl. From the drain, I saw the deepening brown pool oozing, chunks of feces and strings of toilet paper in suspension. I saw my left foot slowly shoot away from the rest of my body, scooping a slow motion spray of chunky wetness towards the door. I saw the pool grow incrementally in my line of sight as I realized I was headed for a belly flop right over the drain.

In one of those amazing adrenalin fueled moments, which seem to crawl a single frame at a time, my brain and body worked in concert to perform the only ballet I will ever dance, the mid-air contortions I perform in free fall in order to land with the least damage. My falling ballet feels like those slow motion films made of cats held by their feet and dropped. I twist as I inch toward the growing pool of effluent, spreading my arms, trying to position myself to catch myself with both hands and right knee. I miss the tripod catch, belly flopping the effluent up on the walls, but immediately push up and hang there, dripping brown wetness. The one-minute bell ends and I hear increased activity in the hall as students begin the literal last-minute scramble for class.

I try to stand using my usual strategy: pushing my butt in the air, placing my feet on the ground, ending with a forceful push-up that vaults me into an upright position. When I push off, my left foot slips away again and I do another flailing ballet, another belly flopping splash. The chunky effluent hits the walls, the door, the sink, my face, my open mouth. I squirm through the pool to the cripple bars on the wall around the commode. I pull myself upright, but still can't get my left foot to grip the floor enough to stand. I put it down, and it slides away each time I attempt to put weight on it. I suspend myself upright with my arms gripping the bars, the sink, the doorknob.

The tardy bell rings. The last runners sprint into the classrooms. The halls are silent. I consider staying in the locked restroom until evening just so I don't have to show myself to anyone, don't have to let anyone else see me, smell me. From down the hall I hear the noise level in my classroom increase, unsupervised students, freshmen after a sugar-filled lunch. I can't hide out.

With my cellphone, I call the assistant principals' office and ask the secretary to send one to my classroom, "There is no blood, no one is in danger of any harm--yet, but I need someone to cover my class now." I open the door and carefully walk down the hall toward my room, placing my left foot carefully with each step, trying to drag the wetness off the sole of my foot so I can get traction again. My usual limp becomes an exaggerated foot-drag, a smelly Quasimodo lurching down empty halls.

I'm twenty feet from my classroom when Mr. Barnes comes around the corner at the other end of the hall hurrying toward my classroom. He hesitates briefly when he sees my dripping brown wetness carefully moving down the hall, "What happened to you?"

I say, "Someday this is going to be a funny story." As we draw closer, about to meet at my classroom door, I see the moment he first smells me. He stops dead, he arches back and his head snaps up as if to escape the smell.

"Is that what it smells like?"

"Yes, the faculty restroom is backed up. I slipped and fell in it....twice. I'm going home to clean up. This class is yours."

I walked through my classroom, briefly told the students what had happened, got in my car, went home, straight to the washing machine in the garage, and stripped off everything directly into the wash. I steamed through a long hot shower, scrubbing every part of my body red. Out of the shower, I gargled with mouthwash and briefly considered pouring it into every orifice of my body. Instead, I got into my robe, fixed an adult beverage and sat in my den, considering whether I would go back to school.

Inspirational, huh, only in the sense of putting other bad days at school in perspective. My worst day at school up until then did not include belly flopping in fecal matter.

It's now the benchmark for a bad day.