Plainsies, Clapsies

A ball bouncing game from my youth instructed the player to throw the ball up (plainsies), throw it up and clap (clapsies) throw it up and roll your hands (roll the ball) and touch your shoulders (tabapsies). In trying to locate the rest of the ball bouncing chant, I found out not only is my “tabapsies” a mondegreen, but also the motion – touching your shoulders – isn’t even the correct movement!

You are supposed to clap your hands behind your back and say “to backsies.” 

Yeah. That makes much more sense.

Being only slightly deflated by this discovery, I will still share my exciting news. 

In an attempt to counteract the stretching of my wrist from doing front squats two days in a row, I pulled out the tabapsies motion this morning.  This, in itself, is not newsworthy.  However, I grabbed both shoulders with all five fingers!!!

Again, not exciting unless you know that when I was nine years-old, I broke my left elbow doing a running cartwheel; the repair required a pin to hold three broken boney bits together, Dunlop’s traction for two weeks (during which time I learned to play cards with my feet), and physical therapy twice a week for a year.  I regained 95% of the range of motion of that elbow, feeling the loss only during . . . you guessed it – tabapsies! I was subjected to a life of partial tabapsies where I could only graze the top of my left shoulder with some of my finger tips. It was a real schoolyard challenge, but I met it stoically.

So this morning’s full-on tabapsies was a revelation regarding the fact that it’s never too late to improve your mobility.

Tabapsies on, people.