Walking - aided

I think it would be remiss to leave out aided walking - with canes, walkers, human supports, and even wheels and motorized wheels. Increasingly, as our societies age and with the advancement of technologies, we will see more of such instances.

Those with walking aids take smaller, more cautious steps. They could be racing along of course - I saw an elderly gentleman really clocking it with a walking cane - but their strides would be greatly reduced, for balance I would presume.

While I don't mean to make generalizations, it appeared that those on manual wheelchairs were down and out (panhandlers, if you will), while those on motorized aids were rubenesque.

Collectively, these made me wonder if the type of aids was another way to distinguish between classes.

So the corollary for LDs, I suppose, is whether the kind of correction or treatment chosen and administered will in the long term lead to some sort of social status (almost, although not exactly, similar to how I've been told that Ritalin is now a drug used by college students to boost their productivity).

Walking - the rest of the body

So after observing walking for a few more days, you begin to realize that walking isn't just about the legs. The rest of the body walks as well.

For instance, there are those who really walk from the hip, and so (pardon my french) you can see their buttocks swaying to the rhythm of the walk. It could be to accentuate a certain sexiness, and hence confidence in their strut. It could also be to get extra stride - I recall that was the advice given to us when we were preparing for our fast marches back in the Army.

Moving upwards, there are those who walk straight up, and there are those who angle their bodies forward, either a haunch (if it's cold) or a whole body tilt from the hip (particularly if they are climbing hills, in a hurry, or carrying a backpack). Or if one is carrying an item on, say, the left hand, then the body would be tilted to the right. I think it's safe to conclude that the environment affects the way the "ancillary walking body parts" - body parts not directly involved in the walking - are positioned.

And then we come to the arms. There was one particularly interesting example of a lady who swung her left hand relatively widely, and bent at the elbow the way you might expect Ugly Betty's sister to do when she walked, with the fingernails pointing upwards. But most other people had relatively subdued arms - I for one had them in my pockets or retracted into my sleeves with minimal movement due to the cold weather.

Walking - normal gait

After discussing walking abnormalities, I suppose it behooves of me to write about walking 'normally'.

It has been raining quite a bit lately, so on the streets, people are walking with certain speed. Contrast this to the languid strolls I saw in Hawai'i. I guess people's inner motivations and socio-cultural context affect their walking (assuming we are talking about normal walkers).

There are those with a swagger too. Those are quite interesting. I don't think people were born to walk with a swagger. That was certainly learnt. Perhaps it shows a certain unease or discomfort with their ego, that they need to compensate with a swagger, to present a confident self despite their current situation.

Walking - abnormalities

Our first assignment was to observe people walking, which was very apt given my heel condition. The background is that my left heel begins to hurt after I take about 5 steps. It got to the point where I was hobbling noticeably, and overcompensating with my right foot.

It got me to think about the reasons why people hobble, or at least not walk "properly" (in quotation marks because, really, what is walking properly? Is there a definitive guide to walking? Interestingly enough, there is a guide on Walking as a sport, but not walking in general. Anyway, I digress). When we see people hobble, we know instinctively that something is wrong, or not normal. But we don't really know why they are exhibiting this 'sign', to use a medical term.

Certainly, there are a number of oft-seen reasons for abnormal gait. Polio for instance can lead to one leg being shorter than another. Some people compensate for it by wearing platforms on the stunted leg, so as to correct the length disparity. However, because of the difference in the position of the knee, there is still an observable difference.

Rickets would be another medical condition where soft bones cause the legs to be bowed at the knee since young. That said, not all bowed-legs come from rickets. I've been told that cowboys do exhibit bow-leggedness because of how they wrap their legs around their steeds. However, I think those with Rickets tend to have it worse - they are generally more stunted. Could there be other reasons for bow-legs? Possibly.

But what about other hobbles where there aren't observable differences in the structure of the leg (from the normal leg). Could it be due to a hurt ankle/heel as in my case? A sore or over-exerted muscle? And even if we knew the 'cause' of the hobble, that's really just an intermediate 'cause', because then we would have to think about why there was a hurt body part in the first place. In my case, was it because of the cold weather having just come from a warmer climate, or was it because I had been walking around too much in the days prior to getting my hurt heel? I also recall hobbling immediately after the Passion Run in 2007 - was it because I over-exerted during the run, or had not trained or warmed up/cooled down properly, or perhaps because after the run I proceeded to cycle home?

There are also 'external' reasons to a hobble. Perhaps gum under one's shoe, or a pebble in the shoe? Or a case of the sole falling off (which happens often enough in the army).

To correct the problem or prevent it from happening again in the future, we would have to determine the cause of the problem. But as seen above, we may not know the real cause of the issue.

By extension, to treat learning disabilities, it is important to establish what was the cause of the problem. As our understanding of LDs improves, it becomes easier to diagnose and treat them. But we still aren't able to root them out completely, which suggests that we may not know the real causes behind them (or perhaps we do but we are willing to take risks to expose ourselves to them).