The jiggling leg

Of all the irresistible tickles that we humans are inflected with, the restless leg syndrome is the worst. I should know because I suffer from it too.

I have not compared the attack with other sufferers, but it comes upon me, without any prior warning. One minute I could be sitting on a chair, or lying on a cot, and the next I am fighting an overpowering urge to shake my feet, left, right or in some rare instances, both. 

It is an odd creepy sensation and not something that is easy to describe. Jiggling of the foot provides some relief, albeit temporary. It is a minor annoyance because the need to move the limb occurs almost immediately, right after you have stopped the movement. It can become quite catastrophic too. If for some reason you are unable to execute the wiggle, there is a feeling of being suffocated, and the oxygen supply, slowly emptying from your lungs. 

One does not get chocked in reality by not jostling the foot, of course not. But that is the impression your nerve endings transmit to your brain. Someone compared it to the perception one gets before a yawn. Only here it is situated in the legs. Or arms, as the case may be. 

Incidentally, restless arm syndrome is also clubbed together under the same disorder headline. The scientists were too lazy to coin a new phrase for the uncontrollable shaking of our upper body appendages. Why bother, they must have thought? The irrationality factor is identical, so they never felt the necessity to look for fresh classifications. 

They should have known better. I mean being left handed is not the same as having two left feet. The former is a personal choice of any ambidextrous person, while the latter is a metaphor, for individuals who are unable to dance. But here I digress. 

Similar to other physical ticks like, nodding of the head, twitching of the eyes, jerking of the torso and so on, the leg jiggling is also more prominently noticed, when it is observed in others. Administered upon one’s own self, it loses its shine, so to speak. 

This was brought home to me recently when I became party to an interaction between two diverse shakers: of the upper and lower limbs respectively. My own two feet were motionless, because standing straight up, there was not a chance that my either foot would display any involuntary movement. 

I was at the lost and found section of the Queen Alia International airport. My bag was misplaced in transit, and I was there to lodge a formal complaint. I had just disembarked from a long flight and had a long fruitless wait at the conveyer belt. 

“Luggage missing, yes?” smiled a portly official, shaking a long thin pencil forcefully. 

“Missing luggage, yes,” agreed my porter, who had offered to accompany me. 

“Flight arrived from?” he left the question hanging, just the pencil tip quivered. 

“New York,” said the porter, waggling his legs rather vigorously under the huge table. 

“Why you answering, and not you?” he asked pointing the shaking pencil at me. 

“She is upset,” my porter emphasised, with another violent shake of his left leg. 

Both of them glowered at each other. 

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, stop jiggling, er, fighting,” I intervened.

“Sit down Ma’am,” they chorused, shamefaced, handing me a chair. 

“No thanks. I like my feet planted firmly on the ground,” I said, filling in the form.