Passenger Pachyderms

When you're a Jet, you're a jet all the way...

Normally when I am struck by a person's gait, it is because they walk with confidence or purpose. Occasionally, a person's gait is noteworthy because it is quirky. I once knew a man who walked fast, chest out, head high, and after each step with his left leg he would snap his right arm sharply behind his back. It could not be missed. He walked like an over-actor in a movie, who has been told to look cool. He walked like he had just stepped off the stage in a Broadway musical, like a cast member of Grease or West Side Story.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.--Sir Francis Bacon

Yesterday I attended a conference where there were several people with disabilities. One man in attendance used a scooter and had parked it just outside the room during the keynote speech. As the group broke between sessions, the man walked out to his scooter. Standing still, he was a man in his fifties, grey haired and balding, well dressed if slightly overweight. He wore a grey suit, his sport-coat was left draped on his chair, and his white shirt and red tie looked sharp. As he began to walk to his scooter, he became a dancer- a Cavalier executing a complex set of small steps in conjunction with fluid and beautiful arm movements. This beautiful but slight locomotion had none of the jagged rigidity or random sharpness to which I am accustomed from others I know with severe mobility disabilities. It was fluid and beautiful, and intriguing.