One of my favorite Monty Python sketches is the “The Ministry of Silly Walks”. It first aired the year I was born, and I’m not alone in loving it. As John Cleese got older, the silly walks got harder to perform live, and so they stopped doing the sketch when the group toured. Fans were disappointed.
It’s too bad that was so long ago, because our family is now primed to act out this skit without even trying!
My own silly walk, which only disappears when I wear a high heel, involves my holding my arms slightly behind my back, kicking my legs out slightly to the sides, and walking like a duck. Let’s just say I’m not runway ready.
Matt, on the other hand, has a little extra spring in his step and has the unfortunate tendency to bob along in any crowd. I’ve relied on his bobbing head to help me find him in crowds for years.
And now, we are about to debut the second generation of silly walkers in our family. Simon can’t walk yet—he can’t even cruise—but he has at last found a way to get from point A to point B. He doesn’t high crawl. He doesn’t low crawl. He scoots on his bottom. (As did I when I was a baby.)
Furthermore, he doesn’t scoot very efficiently. He puts his hands on the ground beside him, pushes himself up and down, and bounces like mad until one or more of those bounces propels him forward. Every now and again he stretches his legs out in front of him and then draws his body in to them, and those scoots are pretty elegant for a scoot. But most of the time he bounces along in his own way, giggling all the while.
And bless his heart, the presence of crawling babies around him does nothing to inspire alternative means of locomotion. Quite the opposite, he gets so excited that he bounces even more, often clapping along the way. I’ve yet to see one person watch him do this without laughing out loud. Which just goes to show you that some humor can stand up to the passing of time.
Let the silly walking continue….