The Damien Walk

There are so many ways that Damien can walk that I have made this page to track them all.

Damien can walk as well as run, but that is NOT enough for him.

Normal walking is not good enough, for him so he has gone to the trouble of makeing up alternate modes of bipedial transportation.

Let me try to list the ways, though this post will need to be updated as he is still in the creative process.

1. Normal Walk
Walk like a normal person, this is probably the way you walk, and the way most people would wakl in every day life if they had a choice. For Damien this is an alternate form of walking it is rare to se him actually walk, there have been whole weeks in which I never once noticed Damien using the Normal Walk to get about.

2. Sumo Walk
Damien will stand with his legs as wide as posible and while still able to keep the soles of his feet on the floor, with his legs bowed in a rough semi circle. Damien will then walk by raising his foot but maintaining the arch of his legs, essentially his whole body is pivoting on his ankle. He will then hold hi foot briefly in the air as if deciding where it shall come crashing down. Finally he falls onto the foot with his full weight, creating a very satifying (to him anyway) WHAM!
As with most of Damiens walks this is followed by much giggiling and smiling.

3. Shuffle Walk
Damien will some times zip around shuffeling his feet, like a small psycotic Charlie Capplen.
he does not like to shuffle slow, no, no, no, because speed is Damien’s friend, or so he believes.
The only sound you will here is the soft voom voom of his socks rubbing on the carpet.

4. Pitter Patter Walk

5. Splits Walk

6. Sea Saw (back and forth) Walk

7. Ice Skate Walk

8. Serpentine Walk

9. Hulk Smash Walk
This walk is usually done with his arms half curled as if he was a body builder posing for a contest. Damien then proceeds to stomp along at a slow pace, like some type of angry pagon god, crushing the unbelievers. It is not uncomin for him to say “Hulk Mash (Smash)” with every other stomp.

10. Kick/Slip Forward Walk

11. Kick/Slip Sideways Walk

12. Skip Walk

13. Single Peg Leg Walk

14. Double Peg Leg Walk

15. Drag the Foot Walk
Damien still does this one where he walks normal with one foot then drags the other foot behind him like he is doing the Electric Slid, across the kitchen. This is one of the walks that Damien will do to slow himself down. He wanted a cracker and I was handing out crackers, so he was racing over to me, but Sergey was already right in front of me begging for another cracker, though he already had one in his moth and another one in his hand. So Damien knew he had to wait before he could get a cracker, so he did the drag the foot walk around in a circle while waiting his turn.

16. Backwards Walk
Damien will often come to a sudden stop, then reverse his walking direction without changing his orientation. This occurs most often when he is pretending to go along with your wishes, only to try a sneaky escape at the last minute.

Example: I am walking Damien down the hall to the stairs so I can get him to the kitchen to feed him breakfast. Now it’s his idea to have breakfast, he was the one saying things like “breakfast” and “cereal”, and he knows these things happen in the kitchen, which is down stiars. But upon shuffeling up to the top of the stairs, he cries out “NO!”, then reverses his shuffel and speeds past me in a hasty retreat. apparently he simply wanted to teleport to the kitchen, or possibly phase through the floor and float into the kitchen, either way he was very against stairs for some reason. maybe it was because he did not have an alternate mode of going down the stairs.

17. Shuffle Stomp Walk
This walk some how combines the two previous walks.
Damiens is shuffling along, his feet are not leaving the carpet from what I can tell, there is the soft “voom” , “voom” of the socks on the carpet. But at the end of every short little step there is a noticible “Thump”, I am not sure if he is just diggin his feet into the carpet at the last moment or what. This walk might be some type of mobile victory dance, when he is going where he wanted to go, and has got the parent of choice in tow, and they are presumadly going to do what it is that Damien wants, becuase he has so commanded it.

18. Tip Toe Walk
Sometimes Damien will walk on Tip Toe, like a ballerina. At least he does not try to go on point, so he is a male ballerina, that is some thing I guess. Maybe he likes the added height since he is a bit on the short side.

19. Frankenstien Walk
I noticed Damien using this new one a lot this Easter at Great Grandma’s house.
Damien stretches out his leg forward at about a 45 degree angle and only touches the floor with the heal of his foot, then keeping the forward leg locked straight, and the ankle locked at a 90 degree angle he will step forward. So once the front leg is in a locked position, it stays locked until Damien is perched upon it, at the apex of his stride, at that point it is apparently OK for him to bend both legs to get the alternate leg into the locked position.

20. The hole in the floor gang {I am calling this walk 20}

When we had our new fireplace put in the workers damaged out tile floor by adding a divot, it is about an inch across and half an inch deep.

Damien likes to try to excavate any loose pieces of grout that he can, or at least encourage other pieces to become loose. The rule is not playing with the hole. Then a few minuets later the “no putting your fingers in the hole” rule was added.

Recently Damien has made an effort to ALWAYS step on the hole as he walks through the kitchen. Sometimes this means he has to take an extra long step, which looks more like a lunge. Other times he will take a micro step, but he is persistent. There are times when I am sure he is traveling back and forth from the living room to the great room, just to step on the hole a few more times.

This morning stepping on the hole was not enough. Since poking the hole was against the rules, Damien needed an accomplice. What better buddy could you have other than Sal. Sal is a 4 foot long salamander (stuffed animal) that grumbles when he moves or is shaken. Sal is longer than Damien is tall, and weighs half as much. Damien comes in the kitchen dragging Sal by his tail, and flumps (Sal is soft so he flumps rather than thumps) him down next to the hole. Damien then proceeds to jam Sals’ (hmm lets check the inter net on this possessive case thing http://www.prose-n-poetry.com/display_work/14225 ah I see) Sal’s stubby claws into the hole in the floor one after the other. Once Damien realized that Mommy and Daddy did not approve, Damien quickly fled the scene, abandoning poor Sal to take the rap.

21. Heel Walk
Damien will walk around allowing only his heel to touch the ground.
His feet are pointed up, with his toes almost curling backwards, as if his feet had been stuck in crazy elf shoes too long. I think he likes this for its basic un-stability which he uses to his advantage to “accidentally” bump into or step on Sergey. Don’t worry Sergey gets back at him by waling up to Damien when his diaper is being changed, and repeatedly smacking him in the head and face with the palm of his little hand, Sergey will do this until I pull him off Damien. I think Damien puts up with it because he knows he has it coming, and it doesn’t seem to hurt him as much as annoy him.

22. Three Steps Forward Two Steps Back Walk / Run
One morning when he awoke even more full of energy than normal {which is quite a lot if you know his regular amount of energy}. Damien wanted to run down the hallway to the stairs, he wanted to go as fast as he could move, but he also wanted to enjoy the moment as long as possible. The Damien solution, run forward four steps really really fast, then run backwards three steps really really fast {I know the MS Word editor doesn’t like me using the word “really” twice in a row, but in this case it is appropriate}.
Even though Damien was going really really fast, Sergey walked right past him on his way to the stairs, this didn’t phase Damien, because it wasn’t the destination that Damien cared about, it was the journey {and going really really fast}.

23. Rolling across the floor
This is not exaclty your basic walk and it doesn’t even include your normal transportation method legs and or feet, or even hands for that matter but Damiens “walks” to use the term loosely are strange, but I am sure not unique to Damien.

Usually I ask Damine to come over to me when he is poopy, {so I don’t have to chase his butt all around the house, yes I suppose that makes me lazy} he usually complies because he doesn’t like to be poopy. This time instead of his normal walking he decided to roll, like a log, across the dining room floor {carpeted}, then trhough the kitchen {ceramic tile}, he even kept rolling even after Sergey attacked him. I was waiting, in the family room, by the changing mat diaper and wipe in hand. Damiens rolling was not very fast so I went for the video camera to record it for posterity. The viedo camer is in the kitchen, and I wanted to capture the Damien Sergey rolling wrestling match, as it bumped its way through the kitchen. Well either Sergey’s assult was too much for Damien to handle or he didn’t want any video evidence, but just as I was turning around with the camera on, Damine jumped up and ran out the the room with Sergey following behind.

24. Pumpkin Walk
Damien walks around with a jock-o-lantern on each foot. I should probably mention that they were plastic trick-or-treat buckets that were only made to look like jack-o-lanterns.

Not sure how he managed to maintain his balance.

This is only second hand knowlege, but supposedly there is digital evidence.