ActiveHome’s Cure for Clumsiness

July 10, 2001 - The Three Stooges, Inspector Clouseau, Wile E Coyote, and the list goes madly on when naming civilization’s most adorable klutzes. Audiences around the world fell en masse (no pun intended) for these clumsy, awkward characters. The psychological reasons are probably very enlightening... or maybe they’re very simple. We can all relate. There’s a bit of the klutz in all of us. Some of us are a little more graceful than others, but occasionally, we’re all bound to make that misstep that could put us at odds with gravity, or remind us how close and how hard the ground really is.

Such is the case with Martha Vanceburg. Martha puts it quite bluntly... "I’m a klutz." But she’s got a sense of humor about it. "I can’t go more than twenty feet without putting myself in a 'near-death’ experience. I just never know when I’m going to be overcome by gravity, and end up on the floor. When it comes to walls, I know they’re there, but for some reason I still hit them." And imagine what steps could do to her. In her own words, "for me, the quickest way down the stairs in on my rear end." And let’s not even mention that sliding glass door. But would you believe she’s found a way to combat her clumsiness with ActiveHome?

Martha’s clumsiness is especially troublesome for her when it comes to wandering around the house in the dark. "I know where the walls and door are, but every night, I get out of bed to go to the bathroom, and before I know it, I’m plastered against the door that I forgot to leave open the last time I got up to use the bathroom." Martha’s favorite story is the night she wandered into her walk-in closet trying to find the bathroom, and once inside the closet, she couldn’t find her way out. "I had to bang on the wall to wake my husband (who is a sound sleeper) and in the process woke up the rest of the house." Needless to say, this bedtime caper has become a comic legend in the Vanceburg family. A story told over and over again at dinners and parties, and one that always elicits a hearty laugh from anyone who hasn’t already heard it a couple hundred times.

But Martha has found a brief reprieve from her clumsiness.

"Thank goodness for ActiveHome." Martha has found those little lamp modules to be invaluable during her nocturnal trips to the lavatory. She knows that she’s going to be getting out of bed at least a couple of times a night, that’s a given. But if she turns up the light, then she’s only going to be jarred into consciousness, and at that point, it becomes a difficult prospect for her to get back to sleep. So she’s hooked up her lamp modules to the Hawkeye motion sensors, and she’s got the lamps set a very low light. She set up her Hawkeye motion sensor on the bedpost on the floor, so that when her feet hit the floor, the lamps come on. Now when Martha gets up to go the bathroom, she can see where everything is, without finding the wall or the door nose-first. And no more trips into the closet where she won’t be able to find her way back out.

"I can’t tell you how relieved I am (no pun intended)" Martha says, "getting up in the middle of the night and knowing that I’m going to be able to find my way. Especially if it’s one of those nights when I’m really in a hurry... if you know what I mean." Which, of course we do.

While X10 can never be a cure for her clumsiness, it sure can help cut down on those hard knocks (pun intended). And imagine all the black eyes and bloody noses that little motion sensor and lamp module have been able to prevent.

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