Are You Clumsy?

I'm like you except without the graceful bit. My nickname at university was 'Clumsy Joe', after I managed to break this guy's Playstation the day after I met him. I'm a bit better now - I don't think I'm neccesarily less uncoordianted, I just cocentrate on what I'm doing more. If you have me round at your house when I'm fucked on something or other, however, things will get spilled and possibly broken.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/ClumsyCover.JPG

I'm getting clumsier as I get older, and it's the most upsetting part of middle-age by a million miles. I used to have a degree of lightfootedness, lighthandedness and physical grace* that just seems to have vanished in the last few years.

*I'm not trying to brag, honestly, just describing what it felt like

my fine motor skills are pretty good for certain things
my gross motor skills are terrible
i was held back in kindergarten for consistently getting "needs work" on my report card under "gross motor skills"
my parents made me take lots of sports so they got a little bit better but i am still a klutz and would never be described as "graceful"

I am reasonably graceful but when I am a clutz it irks me well beyond reason.

Very clumsy. Combination of absent-minded thoughtlessness (which isn't the same, but produces similar results) and poor motor skills, both fine and gross. Things get dropped, trod on, jarred with alarming frequency. Surprisingly, acohol doesn't help.

It doesn't bother me much, because I'm really good at denial.

I'm a lot more together since I started taking dance classes in college, I gotta say. Fumble-fingers still the result of too much caffeine/not enough sleep/PMS/whatever.

michael seems like he would be graceful!
i've gotten better, and actually tried waited tables a few years ago, mostly just to prove that i could. nobody was spilled on or horribly maimed so i count it as a success.

im uncoordinated but worse i can be really oblivious to the physical space around me (especially when it comes to people) and end up stepping on people's toes, walking into people, etc

Ever since I was talking to someone on a sidewalk and flung one arm out for emphasis and slugged a passer-by in the nose, I've been a lot more thoughtful about the personal bubble in crowded public places! God how embarrassing.

Multiple Sclerosis (which I've got) makes one very clumsy.

I'm not clumsy, but my infamous ability to not pay the necessary attention on where I am and what I am doing in the present moment sometimes makes me appear to be.

every time an NFL receiver drops a perfect pass because he started looking away from the catch to start his run before he has full control of the ball I feel a wave of empathy

my depth perception doesn't seem to exist, so i'm always banging into door frames and all kinds of shit, just because i can't judge how far away objects in space are from my body.

also, i'm well endowed in the hip area, which i sometimes forget to the detriment of myself and others, esp working in a small restaurant where there is like less than a couple of feet of space between tables.

tonight i dropped a 64 oz growler full of beer on the floor. so mad at myself.

Woke up this morning, accidentally spilled a whole glass of water i kept by my bedside.

Met with a client who lent me her laptop with files i needed, sat it on my lap, proceeded it have it fall to the floor.

As we parted, I was standing on the porch and somehow lost balance and fell on the ground. She told me gravity and I are not agreeing today and I should stay inside where it is safe. So I'm gonna do that.

clumsy as fuck

i am

Grace, poise, balance, the ability to walk through a doorway without unexpectedly brushing against the frame: just some of the assets I do not have

I think I might be dyspraxic. Is anyone else here dyspraxic? I don't think it existed when I went to school so I was just that klutz who was always picked last for sports, couldn't do needlework and let the ruler drop onto the floor when doing that reflex measuring test.

(yes this is related to my admission elsewhere on ILX today that I can't ride a bike. I also have been having driving lessons for about 6000 years to no end. I'm probably just making excuses but basically every one of the gross motor control symptoms and the complete lack of sense of balance sounded like me. I am terrible at internet hypochondria though so, y'know)

I'm not at all clumsy, and spend a lot of time being careful about how I move about. A rudimentary knowledge of Alexander Technique has helped with this. That said, this morning I was so lost in my own world on the way into work I nearly got decked by an escalator.

My other half is extremely clumsy on the other hand and has injured herself countless times by walking into doors, spilling cups of tea and generally falling over.

I sometimes wonder if some hand-eye coordination issues are to do with being taught to be right handed while some use the left hand more naturally.

Hm, I've heard of the Alexander Technique for back pain, but do you think it would make an innately clumsy person less clumsy?

I am not clumsy. My wife, however, has fallen UP stairs multiple times.

I am ridiculously clumsy. I probably look like a domestic abuse victim due to the almost-permanent displays of bruising, cuts and burns that I incur in a normal day of walking around my house, cooking and doing basic chores. I once broke my nose getting into my bed and hitting my head off the wall beside it. I also broke my wrist AND my nose opening a door. This evening I tried to drain some pasta and managed to position my hand in such a way that the water drained out of the colander and then all over my hand. I don't even know how I managed that - my hand was holding the colander by the handle at the side!

Oh, and I just picked up a bag of crisps I'd been eating and somehow managed to hold the wrong end and tip them all over the floor :-(

Yet I can ride a bike, and have been driving for over 20 years with no incident. I just can't walk through doorways without somehow misjudging them and twatting my arm off the door frame.

APSC: Alexanders is not an exercise, it's a technique. It's largely based around motion, how you move your body and negotiate space, so for example there are a lot of mental routines you have to carry out, like each time you come to your front door, instead of fumbling around for your key, jamming it in and waltzing into your front room to flop into a sofa, you're supposed to take consideration and notice a detail about your front door that you hadn't noticed before. The idea is that it prepares you every time you go to perform an action you take a split second to think about how you're going to perform the action.

I convinced myself I have dyspraxia after reading about it though I'm probably too ready to think I have conditions after reading about them on wikepedia re.internet hypochondria. So much of the stuff it was describing seemed to match, though, including stuff i'd never really connected with clumsiness like being unable to tell left from right, and getting taken to the doctor because I didn't learn to speak until such a late age.
I never managed to learn to ride a bike either, but tbh I was the type of kid that was happier staying inside reading/watching TV, and I always tending to get discouraged easily and give up when trying to do this kind of thing, so it's hard for me to work out what's cause and what's effect wrt being unable to do basic everday tasks like ride a bike or cook etc

The list if celebs with dyspraxia on wikipedia is pretty lame:

Living people who have publicly stated they have been diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder include actor Daniel Radcliffe,[34] photographer David Bailey, Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine, and actress Hannah McDonnell

I hadn't heard of Hannah McDonnell, her wiki page seems to have been deleted and googling her just seems to bring up interviews where she talks about dyspraxia.

Problems associated with this area may include: The acquisition of graphemes – e.g. the letters of the Latin alphabet, as well as numbers.

God, this is totally me as well, to the point that at the age of 28 I still can't remember the order of the alphabet after the letter F and have to run through the alphabet in my head (to the tune of the 'now i know my ABC' song) when trying to navigate my way around bookshops, record shops etc.

always tending to get discouraged easily and give up when trying to do this kind of thing, so it's hard for me to work out what's cause and what's effect wrt being unable to do basic everday tasks like ride a bike or cook etc

yeah I can relate to this a lot.

am I actually worse at balancing on a bike than anyone else who hasn't touched one for 24 years, or just more scared of smashing my face against concrete and/or looking stupid?
am I unusually slow at chopping and bad at timing when cooking or do I just not get enough practise because it's easier not to?
am I dangerous behind the wheel or does the instructor smell my self-doubt and know that he's got my money unquestioningly for as long as he wants to drag it out?
is it some neural processing delay that makes me so slow at starting sentences that I barely say anything in a more-than-2-person conversation, or am I just tongue-tied from self-perpetuating social anxiety because every time I spend an entire conversation nodding mutely I think "wow you are boring and dumb and looked really weird there" and get even more nervous next time?
is my fondness for unnecessarily long and self-absorbed lists a cognitive disorder?
etc

I dropped a full mug of coffee on a girl on a first date.

I have a quasi-freudian theory that a lot of clumsiness is repressed anger. That said, I'm clumsy.

But jesus ailsa wtf

And still with all that you never got even a trial for lb with the bhoys

xxp ha, ouch. was there a second date?

when I was younger I knocked a mug of tea across a second date's parents' expensive beige sofa and carpet, which was probably not as weird as how uncontrollably I cried afterwards, or that I kept seeing the guy for another 5 months despite our vast unsuitability for each other in just about every respect, not just those involving tea

itt a crazy person

I obv pull the irish hugh grant bumbling idiot to good effect she's making me tea right now

ah, next time I shall be sure to spill coffee and not tea, that is clearly the secret

oh yes, forgot to say, ailsa, that's quite impressive. you have my sympathies (and my envy of your transport options)

I'm not notably clumsy. I don't trip, drop things, or run into objects with any regularity. When I do stumble, I can almost always recover without falling down. This has saved me from countless bruises and abrasions. OTOH, I'm not notably graceful, either.

I managed to accidentally try to walk down an up escalator once and then fell down it, but tbh I think this was more down to daydreaming/not paying attention to what I was doing, though again I find this hard to separate from clumisiness.
I live alone and I feel like this ties into the clumsiness? Like if your're regularly spending hours and hours without interactive with anyone else your mind tends to wander or drift off on tangents and you become unaware of your physical environment and do things like try to put a glass down on a table that isn't there etc.

I was trying to walk down an escalator that was travelling in the opposite direction is what I mean, wasn't sure if that was clear reading back what I wrote.

that's okay if you're wearing a raspberry beret at the time

I live in mild fear that I'll take one of my inexplicable tumbles while crossing a road or some other place where it'll result in worse than mild bruising.

I just fell up my stairs ten minutes ago, but that's my own fault for not putting the light on.

'without interactive interacting with anyone else'
jesus, sorry, clumsiness extends to being unable to pot a sentence to ilx without totally mangling it.

post a sentence ffs

ailsa i have to ask.....were you drinking during any of those painful accidents?

None of them (the broken bones occurred when I was still in my early teens). I'm just a bit spacey and rubbish and completely uncoordinated unless I'm really concentrating.

I mean, I walk into doors and coffee tables when I'm drunk too, but I wasn't counting them.

otm imo drunk clumsy doesnt count

I mean im always crashing when i drink but im a p good driver besides

✓

I forgot that I managed to slide off my back doorstep last year while trying to sit down and gouged a big lump out of my back. I genuinely can't remember half the stupid shit I've done to myself, it's just part and parcel of my life now that I'm clumsy and massively accident-prone, like a middle-aged female Frank Spencer.

I like to think i'm coordinated bc i am good at basketball but i tried to go rock climbing the other day and it was humiliating

Has being clumsy ever lost anyone a job? I got a job as a kitchen assistant/general dogsbody in an old people's home after graduating from university, the woman who interviewed me seemed baffled that i would applying for this job when I had a degree, but the degree was was in eng lit and I had no idea what you were meant to do with an eng lit degree (still don't tbh), and i had fucked up all the other job interviews I'd been to up until that point due to awakwardness.
Anyway, she gave me job pretty much out if sympathy I think, and I there was a definite atmosphere of resentment from my new co-workers at this middle class kid from out the area who had just left uni coming vto work with them, esp as was very quiet and withdrawn and I think this came across as stuck up. The fact that I coulnd't carry a tray without dropping things off it, or push a trolley around without ramming it into the wall, or manage to open the lock on the kitchen door unaided all made things more awkward. Eventually they got me to butter bread for sandwitches as I didn't seem capable of anything else, but I couldn't manage this withou making holes in the bread with the knife and I will never forget the 'you have got to be fucking KIDDING me' way my supervisor looked at me when I couldn't manage this. I think I got sacked after less than 2 weeks.

The old people's home was literally across the street from this building:

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/pictures/636xAny/4/7/3/1214473_705751118_eac2c49838.jpg

http://i1.chroniclelive.co.uk/incoming/article1428655.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/dunston-rocket-102064497-1428655.jpg

It was so great walking past this every day it almost made it all worth it

you never felt like climbing up it and destroying it by any chance

Too late now: http://newcastlephotos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/derwent-tower-dunston-rocket-demolition.html

Wasn't being sarcastic about it being great getting to work by the building by the way, I loved it.
ilx doesn't seem to have a brutalist archetecture thread.

I'm sorry, I'm drunk, I'll stop talking about things on this thread now.

well at least take it to the drunk thread tbf

It does have a brutalist ark thread but it's called something about concrete buildings instead of the obvious.

I used to be a waitress, and once knocked a glass of red wine into the restaurant owner's brother's lap. Of course, he was wearing light-coloured trousers. Thankfully they were all lovable batty eccentrics and thought it was a jolly good wheeze, what-ho, guffaws all round, and no harm done. Amazingly, for a mega-klutz, I was quite a good waitress and that was my only disaster.

From a quick search, it seems like this is the closest we have to a thread on Dyspraxia/DCD (some discussion also in RFI: Non-Handedness )

Developmental coordination disorder

It's been on my mind a lot recently. I was diagnosed in high school and picked up some very general, basic coping strategies at the time (along with a few adjustments to my learning/studying structure being granted) but from then until recently (15+ years) I'd more or less taken it for granted and not done a great deal more to properly manage the symptoms, despite the fact that it was obvious to me that it was a major contributing factor to other issues in my life - going through periods of feeling depressed and developing patterns of highly avoidant and at times kinda compulsive + self-defeating behavior.

Taking a series of CBT sessions last year brought things to a head: it made it so that it was inescapable to talk about DCD and the impact it had on my life, plus I found that a lot of the behavioral strategies that my therapist introduced to help deal with avoidance behavior & generally challenge myself also helped with managing dyspraxic symptoms.

This has a weird double-edged effect though - on the one hand I feel like in the last year I've managed the symptoms better than ever and done/attempted things I wouldn't have thought possible before but on the other hand, just by being mindful about the symptoms and consciously working on strategies to cope with them, I feel like I'm hyper-aware of them in my day-to-day life to a degree that I wasn't before. This in turn leads to me catching myself feeling as if 'being dyspraxic' is some central part of my identity, which is something I'm not very comfortable with.

Also just recently a combination of stresses coming from work, semi-serious family stuff & the challenges I'm trying to set myself (going through driving lessons at the moment which is a fuckin pain in the neck) has made it feel like the symptoms are kicking really hard - but again it's hard to say how much this is exaggerated by being more consciously aware of them.

Ugh I've already rambled on way more than I meant to. I'd obviously be interested in discussing experiences with anybody else on here with a dyspraxia/DCD diagnosis if they're comfortable doing so, and also more than welcome to hear from anyone who isn't diagnosed but feel they share some/many of the symptoms.

One thing that I'm particularly interested in - which hopefully opens out the discussion a bit - is discussing the experience of 'coming out' to people regarding having a learning difficulty/learning disability or other type of neurodevelopmental disorder: the pros & cons of doing so, good & bad ways to go about it, etc.

I'm not out at work. Obviously close family know & a very few close friends but otherwise that's it. I have very mixed feelings about sharing it further, particularly at work.

(Coming out was the phrasing that naturally came into my head while typing, but if people feel this is problematically appropriative as a way to put it or just an inapt analogy then please let me know).

I was diagnosed with this at primary school, but it wasn't ever mentioned after I started secondary school, and I had a really bad time there, also possibly down to (still) undiagnosed ADD or aspergers, I'm only just starting to take an interest in this stuff and still very reluctant to get diagnosed as I have managed to find a way to live and be happy already, also am massively stubborn, and would honestly still prefer to be the weird kid than have a label.

Dyspraxia doesn't bother me practically except when I get a weird spasm and jerk my arm out, knocking over a glass. "Why did you do that?" "No idea" Is that even dyspraxia? Sounds like you know much more than I do.

i am no-handed/ambisinistrous, clumsy, and physically uncoordinated but from reading that wikipedia link i do not seem to fit DCD. It doesn't have a huge effect on my life, it's more a slight pain in the ass/inconvenience at times.

xpost to Cam - Thanks for sharing. My gut feeling is that if you have found a way to live and are happy - go with that? I don't feel people should be under any pressure to get a diagnosis for its own sake.

Haha, that baffled "why did you do that?" response is one that I've encountered a good few times.

Weirdly ambidexterity/non-handedness is one of the few core symptoms that I don't have, I'm very strongly right-handed.

This is by far the best summary of how dyspraxic symptoms present in adults that I've read:

Dyspraxia in Adults

Though obv the usual caveat not to self-diagnose applies.

I'm incapable of getting a driving license and have metal holding my ankle together from an ankle snapping clumsy incident. I'm probably somewhere on the autism spectrum as well. But somehow managed to be an electrician for a decade and a half without ever falling off a tower scaffold/ladder/scissor lift for a decade and a half, fuck knows how tbh!

an ankle snapping clumsy incident. - Ouch!

It's not super-unusual for dyspraxia to be co-morbid with an autism spectrum disorder. An educational psychologist that I saw not long after being diagnosed suggested that in my case it was co-morbid with Asperger's syndrome or at least certain Asperger's traits, without it getting as far a formal diagnosis of co-morbidity. It sort of made sense at the time but looking back now I'm pretty skeptical, their approach very much felt like they were 'looking for Asperger's' and jumping to conclusions based on not much evidence.

My son with classic autism has very poor spatial awareness coupled with a microscopic eye for detail, while he is barging around knocking some things over - he will obsessively move other things to within a millimetre of where they *should be*.

i've always been clumsy. looking at that list i have terrible gross motor skills, just awful. my spatial awareness is also awful. someone asks me the question "how much" and i just say "don't be ridiculous, i can't answer that". distance perception also bad, my driving skills are awful.

speech and language... this probably isn't the right thread, but i'm really concerned that my language skills, particularly my written language skills, have been seriously degenerating over the past couple years. i make stupid typographical errors without noticing, i frequently leave out important words, particularly short connecting words, and i mix up homonyms a lot. i'm terrified that i have early onset senility.

i trip and fall on the sidewalk every 2 months or so

I am amazed to find I have never posted in this thread. My other half tells me I could cut myself on the air or trip and fall over my own shadow. I am constantly injuring/burning/cutting myself, walking into things/banging bits of myself on objects, dropping shit, falling up/down stairs (this less often, but only because I am SO AFRAID of it I take a lot of care).

Despite all this I have somehow never broken a bone, just had a few twisted ankles.

I’m about as graceful as a ballerina with glue in their boots