Chimpanzee wedgies

You know what I love about these blog things? They force me to take note of and appreciate all of the random/bizarre things that happen to me on an everyday basis. And it never fails, every week something random and/or bizarre happens to me (which is status quo for my life...and God, I love it). If nothing bizarre happens on its own, I manage to somehow create the wackiness without even trying. I heart randomness so I manifest it on a daily basis. Rock on.
When I started these things, I promised myself that I would never  force myself to write them.. I’m only going to write them as long as I actually want to. I refuse to succumb to peer pressure if and when I get to the point where I just don’t want to do it anymore. But, so far, every week something has happened that I just have to share or I feel like my creative outlet will short circuit and I’ll explode. So, I keep going.
So here’s how it all goes down...each week, I’ll randomly come up with an idea. Many times I’ll feel kind of “ehh” about the topic when I first think of it.  On more than one occasion, I've been convinced that I should just skip at least a week. But then, never failing, throughout the week, I’ll get a bunch of different confirmations from different sources that make it obvious that I’m supposed to go forward with and share my original idea. It’s like God puts this teeny tiny egg of an idea in my brain uterus at the beginning of each week, and then puts me through intensive fertility treatments throughout the rest of the week so I have no choice but to produce by Thursday... God has totally knocked me up on a weekly basis.
For example, this week I thought “ehhh, guess I could write about the cage.” I had a “kinda sorta maybe later” idea related to it that I felt luke-warm about...but then I got a kick in the butt (or three) that confirmed I should go ahead with it. I :

1. randomly read an article last night about the exact same subject I had been considering
2. found a page in my mom’s bible dog-eared to a page where the subject was, once again, relevant to my weekly thought egg

...and just in case that wasn’t enough

3. literally had a strange woman knock on my door to sell me magazines and then go off on a tangent about my topic.

So ok, I get it. So here goes. The cage.

A few weeks ago, my outpatient boss decided that I should be cage trained. For those of you that don’t know, the cage is an intensive therapy program that involves a system of pulleys, bungees, and straps attached to a, well, cage that are utilized to perform a variety of exercises in the gravity-eliminated plane. That way, even the lowest of low level patients can get some strengthening without having to fight against that downer gravity (groooan, “downer gravity”....a science joke. -15 cool points for me). A lot went down in the cage. I :

1)experienced the world’s most painful wedgie (I don’t care if you’re wearing a large Hanes parachute or Victoria’s Secrets Sexy Little things...spend some time in a suit made entirely of bungee cords, and your underwear IS going to play a game of Twister, I guarantee it )
2) had to tickle the origin of insertion of my boss’s hip adductors (read: PUBIS)
3) was diagnosed with mild spastic CP.

It was all in all good times.

After the training , I asked my dad if there was any possibility that I could have CP, and he got pissed. I personally thought it was a valid question. A brain injury would make so much sense for me on so many levels. My mom had written in my baby book that I rolled for the first time at nine months (nine! Shouldn’t I have, I dunno, had a job or something by then?). My preschool and Kindergarten teachers said I was retarded because I wouldn’t talk. And I’ve been told there was an episode where I fell in the pool as a baby (not entirely sure how that happened, as I apparently wasn’t rolling into any pools). My mom always claimed that she got me out right away, but don’t I act like I have a brain injury to you?
Anyway, my dad was offended at the notion that there could be anything wrong with me. Personally, I was excited about it; I thought it would be freaking awesome. I’m happy with my life up to this point; but if I made it this far with CP, I’m a superstar! Besides, it could serve as a nice excuse to totally jack people in the face that are annoying me . (BAM! ohhhh, so so sorry, that was my extensor tone from my CP,  I can’t help it).
I must confess, I have an MRI that proves that I don’t have CP. Darn. Nevertheless, CP or not, I still have those same weaknesses that I had in the cage. My time in the cage worked on my weaknesses, fortified my strengths, and kicked my ass to make me all the better for it.
The way I see it, life is kind of like a cage. I’m fairly certain I’m not going to make it out alive. So, my options are:
A) Focus on my weaknesses and how they are holding me back whilst killing time in the cage until its over
B) Bounce around like a monkey and have some fun...acknowledging my weaknesses but focusing on improving my strengths so that I can bounce even higher. Oooh ooo ahhh ahh!
For that week, I chose option B. B for bounce. After all, whether I bitched and moaned about the cage or just made the best of it, I was still going in the cage. So why not have a little fun with it? I mean, come on, if you can’t make fun out of a situation where you and your boss are kindred wedgie spirits, you’ve got issues.
As in the cage, in life,  rather than focusing on weaknesses and pining after what we can’t do, why not cut ourselves a little slack and focus on our strengths to get us further along?
New thought that's slightly related: My favorite people in the world are “real” people. Those people that , despite their social status or impressive resumes, come across as human to anyone and everyone they meet. One of my favorite people is my clinical instructor Kim from my last OT internship. She was a freaking knowledge factory. However, she didn’t ride around on a high horse with a God complex, making others (and her student) feel like pieces of crap for not knowing all that she knew. Rather, she was a joker and was honest and open in all things to the point where people weren’t afraid to come to her for help, and thus they could learn in the process. I remember my second day on the job. I still had the new student jitters. Kim and I were walking from our office to the main hospital when suddenly Kim paused, looked at me, and puked on the sidewalk. She glanced at me, cracked up, and said “sooo, you’re the only person that knows this besides my husband, but I’m pregnant and I have bitching morning sickness right now” I responded with “Congratulations....you have a little bit of vomit on your sweater”... and we’ve been friends ever since. Incidentally, I learned more from her than from anyone else, mostly because I could ask her anything at all and not worry about being judged as stupid. She wasn’t afraid to be seen as a human who sometimes pukes on her sweater, despite her high ranking in a big hospital. I love her for that.
So, life is a cage. We can dwell on our weaknesses and pine after other people’s strengths. We can talk ourselves up to make other people feel better about us (ourselves included). Or, we can acknowledge our weaknesses,even laugh at them...hey we can even work on them a little,as long as we don’t perseverate on them. When we are nice to ourselves (without being self-absorbed jackasses), we lift other people up in the process. It encourages them to be nice to themselves too and work on their strengths. And the world is healed and becomes a better place, for you and for me. Sunshine and rainbows, yay.
  So, if you’re a natural swimmer, don’t freak out if your neighbor is a better runner. He’s a gazelle, you’re a fish...it is what it is, stop bringing yourself down Nemo and just keep swimming. By doing so you might just inspire Dorie. (BTW mates- Nemo references neither add nor subtract cool points).
One last cliche point: life would be boring if we were all perfect. Life is about growing and unfolding. If we were all born like Benjamin Button, racing through our developmental milestones, we’d have nothing to look forward to becoming in the future. I think about where I was two years ago, and am amazed at the difference between that Sara and this one. I mean, my hair is still brown and my boobs are still huuuuge, but I am totally different on the inside, with totally updated perspectives and priorities. Im Sara 2.0. Had I been born this way, rather than being given the opportunity to change and evolve over time, I would have no appreciation for how I am now. I have hope that Sara 2.0 will be totally outdated and improved in two more years.
Rather than worrying about who or what we could be like, I vote we focus on what we’re working with today. I say we stop stressing so much about what we can’t do... perpetually comparing our current selves to others, even our future selves, only makes us feel continually unworthy and unhappy.  It’s a good thing to try to improve upon your weaknesses...if the weakness truly is important, you’ll be better at it tomorrow. I promise. And  if improvement doesn't happen, maybe that area of concern is not your battle to be reckoned with. Leave the running to the gazelles.  Stop bringing yourself down, put your ass in a high-flying gravity -eliminated plane (with your negative self-talk being your own damn gravity), and give yourself the chance to bounce off the walls a little, gravity-free. It’s great fun. And you’ll be surprised at how much stronger you’ll become once you treat yourself to some regular good old fashioned gravity-eliminated exercises.
May your gravity be eliminated and your pants wedgie free.
                  Love,
                   your resident monkey