I like to think that my legs are talking.

While writing the other day, I remembered the old story my mother told me:

That my brain was like a hub where all the telephone operators were. All the veins and nerves running through my body are the telephone wires.

Somewhere in my head there is a lazy telephone operator who did not connect the call properly; the signal isn’t getting to my legs properly.

The connection is broken.

I love this image as it is the easiest way for me to understand (and hence explain) what Cerebral Palsy is like, what it does to the body. I also like it because it’s so visual, so easy for anyone and everyone to see.

The other day, while walking home, my legs started spasming again. They were rock hard in seconds, my calves like stone that neither moved nor shifted under my skin.

Instead of being frustrated or repulsed as I normally am, it occured to me that my muscles were talking to each other.

Except, instead of being polite muscles and talking one at a time, they were all talking at once, nattering away until there was nowhere for their voices to go.

Held in by my skin, my muscles filled up my legs until they were heavy with pain, with pulses, with throbbing voices.

I stopped on a park bench, the hot sun on my face, and waited for my muscles to finish their conversation.

Now, you may not know it, but muscles tend to to natter and chatter for far too long. I waited five minutes before I got to my feet again and started to walk.

Almost immediatley, the muscles started talking again, clucking at me with outrage that they hadn’t been given enough time to finish their conversation.

Looking down at my legs, I could feel them throbbing and spasming-no, talking and yelling underneath my clothes. I sighed.

It was going to be a long conversation.