BEDA #3: My Skillz Part One

When I went to see an unor­gan­ised Janeane Garo­falo at the Mel­bourne Com­edy Fes­ti­val tonight — and sat in a crowded room full of peo­ple — I realised one of my great­est skills in life is fold­ing my legs away to let peo­ple walk to/from their seat. It doesn’t mat­ter if I’m sit­ting in the Mel­bourne Town Hall, a uni­ver­sity lec­ture the­atre or the tightly-rowed Dock­lands Sta­dium (or Eti­had Sta­dium as my lawyer tells me to call it) I am a plea­sure to pass on your way to the toilets.

The fact that my legs make up the same amount of my body that water does (a lot) means that to fold them away under­neath my chair is no mean feat. Whilst peo­ple around me per­form mean feats and don’t even strive to fold their legs away (can I use ‘strive’ as a metaphor if we’re talk­ing about legs?) I want noth­ing more than the person-in-transit to pass me with absolute ease.

In fact, watch­ing me fold away my legs would be like see­ing a large piece of butcher’s paper being made into a beau­ti­ful, tiny origami swan. Which actu­ally sounds much more impres­sive than bend­ing your legs back. Maybe I should try to learn that skill and get a job in a fish ‘n’ chip shop. Just imag­ine the look on your Dad’s face when he comes into the shop on a Fri­day night and I serve him his seafood pack on the back of a paper crane.