by Fabìola Marelli
It is at the age of ten that I consciously realize that my hands are not skilled if I ask them to perform certain tasks that are required of me.
Yes, of course, even in previous years I had noticed that in "helping my mother in the kitchen or making the bed I was clearly outclassed by my three-year-old sister, both in time and in executive precision, but everyone affectionately nicknamed me" the princess ", so I myself had relegated myself to that castle where doing or not doing had the same importance.
Those two hours become my nightmare: I struggle to sew, embroider, crochet and use needles to knit.
The six of the promotion I get it exclusively for exhaustion of the teacher, who gives up in front of a polite but clumsy pre-adolescent.
My thanks consist in "opting for Latin in the following two years, making the teacher a happy person.
Fifteen years pass before the "problem" re-emerges in a mercilessly evident way during the construction of what will become my house, in which my contribution as a helper / laborer - almost nil - soon makes me earn the little honorable title of "fistùn de verza" (Lombard dialect definition which means "good for nothing").
The tools slip out of my hand or I can't grasp them precisely; I make a mistake in the grip, I use my force badly, I proceed at inadequate speed.
There is a real waste of energy that is found in the excessive stiffening of some parts of the body not engaged in movement.
This difficulty in sectorialising the movement (dissociation) is often compensated by the "excessive use of muscle strength: substituting force for precision is in fact a compensatory strategy common to people defined as" clumsy ", even if almost always inadequate.
...
The more the activities are automatic and monotonous, the more my motor incoordination increases.
I always have to think about how to do but also a because I really have to do it ... since I have never (in the past and still today) been interested in that type of business such as DIY.
The balance and coordination of each movement, from the most global to the finest, and their adjustment to the characteristics of the object and its exact location, are the results of a "tonic-muscular activity that varies continuously according to the change of relationships between bodily forces and those of the outside world.
To be able to control the movements, the motor systems must select an option among the many possibilities that exist for the same movement, ie for its different degrees of freedom.
For example, in the action of grasping an object placed on a table top we can mobilize, using different osteopathic techniques, the various joints of the shoulder, elbow, wrist.
The motor system acts by reducing the number of choices through a "compacting" of the degrees of freedom belonging to the muscle groups involved in the same movement.
The degrees of freedom to be controlled are those of the movement as a whole and not those of each muscle acting on each joint.
This highly selective compacting capacity allows an adjustment of the motor act to the sometimes very nuanced characteristics of the environmental context in which it takes place, such as the distance between oneself and the object to be grasped, its structural characteristics, the speed with the which is necessary to perform the gestures.
...
Anger. Impotence. Suffering.
I have had and still have real, objective difficulties when dealing with practical life.
Difficulties that should not be underestimated, just as the feeling of inferiority and frustration that assails me when I do not feel understood or, worse, derided ... and that could transform a polite and kind person into a devastating bomb unexploded.
The inelegance in the movements is generally induced by some emotional states and / or by circumstances such as haste, anger, anxiety, shyness, fear ... to which one reacts by losing balance, trembling, moving in jerks or heavily "like an elephant in a china shop".
Second part "
