Dizzy

Photo credit to Tim Inconnu

Over the past week or so I have been afflicted with random spells of dizziness. It came on quite suddenly and was really upsetting those first few days. There I'd be, walking down the hall, when whoops! I'd swerve to the right and slam into the wall. Or I might be performing routine household chores--changing the bed, sorting the laundry, putting away the groceries--when the lightheadedness would appear out of nowhere, forcing me to grab something stable lest I tumble to the ground with a jar of pasta sauce in my hands.

Eventually the problem spiraled out of control, so I visited the doctor. Her diagnosis was that I suffered from a form of vertigo, mostly harmless yet supremely annoying, a disorder caused by the fact that calcium inner ear "rocks" had become dislodged and were now zooming around in areas they were never meant to visit. She gave me some home exercises to perform, with the hope of sending the rocks in my head scrambling back to their intended locale.

So far, I think the exercises have mostly taught me to self-correct my swerving, spinning reactions at a much quicker pace than before. Hopefully I no longer appear to outsiders as a dizzy, tipsy blonde who has been hitting the sauce a bit too heavily.

This adventure in less-than-constant equilibrium got me to thinking about childhood. Most kids, myself included, love to spin themselves rapidly in circles, hell bent on manufacturing the same kind of dizzy sensations I have been doing everything in my power to avoid.

I was probably six or seven years old, and mom had decorated our yard with cement creatures. One was a tiny cement donkey--white with black spots--yet another subject in my expansive and sometimes imaginary animal kingdom. Over time one of his ears cracked from the heat stress caused by the high altitude sun beating down on his tiny little cement self, exposing a section of rebar. This only made him seem a smidge less than real, as I was still quite capable of imagining him as my own personal pet donkey.

In my Charleston dance outfit
for the 4th grade spring fair,
with momma deer and baby deer
in the background.

We also had two cement deer, one large and one small, both lying calmly in repose under the honey locust tree. I called them momma deer and baby deer, although baby deer had a full set of antlers and so did momma deer. No matter, that's what I called them anyway.

So there I was in the hot breezy midst of summer, playing alone in the front yard in a pair of yellow stretch shorts with matching flowery shirt. Determined to make myself dizzy, I spun 'round and 'round and 'round, arms outstretched, feeling my stable grip on the earth slowly melt away.

As was the custom for this silly game, I stopped suddenly then staggered backwards and sideways in a fit of giggles until something unexpected happened: my backside landed directly on one of momma deer's antlers. The metal antler tore into my butt cheek and I let out a scream, falling to the ground with one hand frantically clutching a bloodied spot on my rear end.

Mom came to the rescue and provided much-needed comfort and hugs, before admonishing me on how dangerous it was to play the spinning game so close to a cement deer with antlers and how my yellow play shorts were probably ruined and she'd try to patch the hole as best she could but no guarantees.

(As an aside, I believe this event may have been the catalyst for those dark years when mom would sew "play clothes" for me using scraps of leftover drapery fabric, much like the kids in The Sound of Music wore.)

Fortunately, the gaping wound on my butt cheek did not require stitches but remained a sore spot for a long time. It also provided fodder for the neighborhood kids, who loved to poke fun at any child's misfortune but their own.

And lucky for them, I was always a reliable source for such stories...