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Coprolite Newsletter, June 2006You've Got to Walk the Walk According to the Native American saying, you shouldn't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins. Lately, the truth of this has been brought home to me. I've come to understand my father a lot better since I started walking like he did. It's not that my father wore moccasins. Before he retired, he wore mostly brown oxfords to work and sneakers in the garden. In his later years, he tended to favor awful-looking loafers with Velcro closures. But I think it's not the shoes that are important here, it's the walking. Sometimes it seems like the story of a man's life can be read in his walk. There was a time when my father's walk was fluid and determined. He had the walk of a former Boy Scout hiker, of an outdoorsman, of a man who had done without a car during much of World War II. When I was in junior high, it meant a lot when he told me I was one of the few people who could walk fast enough to keep up with him. In his later years, however, all that changed. He had bad knees, which for some reason he never got fixed like my mother did. His walk became more of a codger shuffle, and stairs were obviously painful. I no longer aspired to walk like he did. In fact, I studiously avoided it. As I got older, sometimes the first few steps I took after getting up from a chair resembled the way he walked. As soon as I realized how I looked, I'd quickly correct it — sometimes even before my wife yelled at me to straighten up. It was important to me to walk with a youthful spring in my step, even if it was late fall in my back and legs. Then, about a month ago, something happened. Maybe it was the yard work I did that day, or the bags of softener salt I carried down to the basement. Anyway, I spent an awful night with pain in my lower back and right hip. Next day, we left on a month-long vacation with our son and his family. It began with a couple of agonizing plane rides, followed by a lot of riding in a car over punishing Irish roads. Luckily, Irish pharmacies sell some very potent pain relievers over-the-counter. I managed to log a lot of miles walking through the beautiful scenery, even though I lagged behind the rest of the family. And gradually, things have settled down to almost normal back-and-hip-wise. Anyway, as I said at the beginning, trying out my father's way of walking this past month gave me new insight into his life. Not that I plan to continue walking that way myself. The shuffle made famous by Tim Conway is not the model I aspire to follow. I've got a new mentor in mind. This week we've attended half a dozen of our granddaughter, Meghan's, soccer games. Watching her and her teammates flit up and down the field was inspiring. That's the style of locomotion I'd love to try. Maybe in the future I'll be able to say that you shouldn't judge me until you've run a few yards in my striped black soccer cleats. ––Wayne Adams To read other Coprolite Columns, return to Newsletter Archives. You are welcome to forward this newsletter to anyone, as long as you send it in its entirety. To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://three.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coprolitenews.
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