Hail! Hail! The Oddwalk Kid!

“I said your name will
Be in lights…
And that’s no doubt
But you got to have
A manager that’s what
It’s all about”

Eyeball Kid, Tom Waits

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went downtown to meet two friends and have a coffee. In the end, we ended up not having coffee whatsoever because we were (and still are) extremely short of money, but we met the most extraordinary kid on Earth:

Oddwalk Kid!

Let me tell you how it happened:

We were outside Café & Té (delicious smoothies, I must say) talking for a while, when I noticed something weird: a kid kid was running into us! But this was no normal kid. He was short, chubby, about twelve years old and blonde. “Why, you’re losing your mind! There are plenty of kids like that!”, you might say. Yes, indeed. But this one had a distinctive trait: one out of three of his steps ended in a nice, though unelegant, backwards kick in the air, accompained by a little jump. This reminded me two things. First, Tido’s similar encounter of the third kind with this kind of beings. And second, the amazing Mr. John Cleese himself:

The Oddwalk Kid made me think. What’s his story? Why did he choose to walk that way? Is he a Fama fan? Or perhaps is he a Billy Elliot fan? As one of my friends said “Nah, he’s too fat to be Billy Elliot”.

Oddwalk Kid’s walking routine

I guess we’ll never know. But, from here, I wish to pay my respects to Oddwalk Kid. And I think you should, too.

Hail! Hail! The Oddwalk Kid!

He was born without a sense of rhythm, not even a bit,
but he grown up to be the Oddwalk Kid!
We are lost in the darkness of this world,
but he came to teach us how to really walk!
Hail! Hail! The Oddwalk Kid!*

*Lyrics taken from Tom Waits’ Eyeball Kid and modified by Mr. Paws and I.