Ah, Friedreich's ataxia, my old enemy

My little sister recently said she thought that my brother and I suffered no Friedreich's ataxia symptoms till college. She said she just remembered us running around and playing like normal. I had to disabuse her of that notion about me.

Our grade school added a playground with a three-tiered balance beam when I was in about fifth grade. I wasn't able to climb to the different tiers, but I remember being so proud of myself for walking the low beam. I am sure I bragged to Mom about it.

I am not sure where I got it, because the Internet didn't exist, but sometime in grade school I had gotten a list of three coordination exercises. One used a yard stick, but I forget the exercise.

One had you stand up, bend your legs slightly, stretch your arms and close your eyes. I don't remember perfectly, but I want to say 15 seconds was my time, and if I cheated a bit -- say, opening my eyes or moving my arms -- I got to 30.

The last was to improve hand-eye coordination and involved bouncing a ball off a wall and catching it. I rarely caught more than one in a row.

I think the poor hand-eye coordination also explains my poor attempts at javelin in Summer Games 2. You had to push the button really fast to get up speed before the toss. I just could not do it. I was great at rowing, though.