Odd Quad Bod

I'm very familiar with the peculiarities of living as a quadriplegic. Having warm legs with ice cold knees and feet isn't unusual. Muscle spasms are another aspect of life that are very familiar. If I hit a bump or a stray air current breezes past, I go stiff as a board or have flying arms and legs. I thought I had this well known, until this week.

My parents managed to get away all of last week and I had my own house again for a few days. My best friend John's wife was also gone so he came down for a quick two day visit. John also brought along his two sons, TJ (3.5 years old) and Jeremiah (9 months old).

It isn't a secret that I love kids and I have been looking forward to them coming. Unlike John's last visit, we didn't take on any major computer projects. This round was just catching up and keeping the

kids happy. Jeremiah just started crawling a few weeks ago and happily explored all over the house. I quickly learned that our baby proofing was nowhere near adequate, but he survived without any lasting injuries.

One of Jeremiah's favorite activities was pulling himself up on the side of my chair. This is pretty typical of kids his age around me and I'm happy to be a jungle gym. However, Jeremiah moved on around and decided to also use my feet and legs as climbing posts.

The first few times he did this I was certain my legs would kick from the touching and send him back to the floor. Much to my thankful surprise, they never even twitched. The next dozen or more times this happened, I never had any spasms at all. Normally, with him grabbing on and pulling himself up on my legs, they would jump all over. Thankfully, they were fine every single time. This also included him crawling over me when I was sitting in bed showing off fancy toys like my mouth stick and floss pick.

Times like these show that just when I think I know how my body will react to certain situations, it proves me wrong. The next time I'm around a crawling critter that takes interest in my legs could be completely different, but I'm thankful for the results this time and look forward to another visit.