Treasures

I’m wondering if the things we buy on vacation, as souvenirs, aren’t sometimes things we could get at home. If this is the case, we don’t buy them when we visit Alvero Street, Chinatown or any number of discount malls and swap meets because we consider them junk. The other things we don’t buy at home, we do without because we really don’t need. But we buy these things on vacation. We then bring them home and placed them on some shelf. People come to our house and say, “Oh, I saw these at….” It takes us only little effort to explain that it’s not one of those cheap things. You know they don’t believe us.

We buy a common household items emblazoned with the names of tourist destinations. We buy cultural pieces that we’re told someplace is famous for. We also buy high-end items that don’t cost any less than at home, but hell, we’re on vacation.

Most generally, we will need extra luggage to go home because of all our new treasures, so we’ll buy a new bag as well. Once we get home, we will honor and cherish these touchstones to memory. Next year they will be in our yard sale.

I Worry about These Things

True, my personal paranoia runs deep, but it’s part of the world I live in. I’m at least normal, but there are certain things that give me pause. No, not pause—panic.

My main concern involves my friend indeed: The common carotid artery.

Like any high school graduate knows, the artery in question carries oxygen to the brain. If you stop the flow of oxygen to a person’s brain, he or she will lose consciousness. If the brain is deprived of oxygen for a longer period, the person will possibly lapse into a coma. Permanent brain damage in likely if this situation continues.

I like my brain to sustain as little damage as possible. None at all would be welcome.

In the luggage and travel section of any department store, you will find a nifty little accessory to make sleep more comfortable while a passenger on a train, a bus or an airplane. This accessory is an inflatable pillow that wraps around your neck. With the pillow in place, you can lean your head to one side and drift off to dreamland.

This harmless, little pillow scares me. Let me tell you why. My head being somewhat large (or so I’m led to believe), I figure it must weigh several pounds. If I fall asleep, I worry that the dead weight of my head, pressing on the pillow, will press the pillow firmly into the side of my neck and cut off the blood flow through my carotid artery.

At this point, I assume I would first lose consciousness, following which I would, no doubt, die. Of course, no one would think to even try reviving me because they wouldn’t want to disturb my nap.

My fear does not lack substantiation by science, but I don’t tell others about it.

For increased safety, modern seatbelts usually include a shoulder strap. The shoulder strap just happens to cross the base of the neck. When I buckle my seatbelt, I worry that the edge of the shoulder strap will be just tight enough to stop the blood flow through my good friend, the carotid artery.

This situation while driving doesn’t cause me concern that I will end up in a coma. No, I’ll just pass out, leaving my car without a conscious driver. Without a sentient life form at the wheel, my car would careen into oncoming traffic and maybe make the KFI Traffic Update.

Go ahead, laugh, but I bet that unexplained cases of people dropping dead or dozing off at the wheel could be attributed to this very problem.

I may be paranoid, but someday you’ll know why I unexplainably died while sleeping on the Red Eye.

Muster

Muster on a pleasure cruise is a little bit funny until you stop and consider what’s going on. It's a little like having a Halloween party in June because you hard there was a Satanic cult just down the street with human sacrifices on their agenda.

The faces of passengers range from comical to surly at being made to perform this ritual, and that which would otherwise be alarming is rendered grotesque when framed by a fluorescent orange life vest. After the herding and the lining up, you expect to be ear-tagged or branded.

If an emergency evacuation were to happen in the late evening, I’m amused by what I think this might look like. I see human cattle with pajamas and undergarments beneath their life vests. In the same emergency during dinner, I imagine there would be various types of gourmet food splattered upon formal wear.

I’ve seen enough disaster movies and at least three movies based on the sinking of the Titanic to know certain things. First of all, muster doesn’t happen. Instead, everyone scurries about like wet rats, and water gushes from almost everywhere. Second, if you escape but aren’t in a lifeboat, you will be sucked under by the submerging ship or freeze to death. Third, in the event that you survive, you will live a life of guilt for all those in steerage who died so you would have a place on an escape vessel. And last, the fact is that pretty much everyone dies except Molly Brown.

Muster is like a fire drill. No one takes it seriously, and no one remembers it in a crisis. There are only two things you really need to know if the cruise ship is sinking during your holiday. These things are that anything with the ship’s name can be sold on eBay, and while the ship is going down all the bars are open.

Could This Be Avoided?

Over and over again I see something on the highways and byways of America that saddens me, or even sickens me, though I must have seen it more times than I care to count. Each time I pass this familiar sight, I look and have to ask why. Though some tragedies are unavoidable, I think this one could probably be avoided almost altogether.

Marsupials are considered slightly higher on the smart-scale than, say cows, so why can’t opossums keep from getting run over by cars? They have common sense enough to carry their young in a pouch, rather than letting them hang on for dear life like monkeys, but then they go right out and challenge an internal combustion engine to a death match. It doesn’t take rocket science to know the outcome here.

Relatively speaking, the other side of that road is the great unknown to that opossum; it’s a long way over there. Even after Columbus discovered America, people didn’t jump the pond with any regularity until the airplane. Why can’t this furry thing just settle down on one side of the road or the other?

He could say, “Life is good here living under the Smith’s house. There are plants and grubs and an occasional treat from the garbage.” If nothing else, he might say, “Poor Joe hasn't been the same since he got that new Goodyear weave. I’m not repeating his mistake.” But apparently they don’t learn from the mistakes of others any better than human teenagers.

The opossum isn’t the fastest creature on the planet, so the odds are against him on surviving a trip across the road. If the odds were in his favor–or even a solid 50/50--it might be worth the risk. If what I’ve seen is accurate, most of these guys become road pizza.

I have two theories for why this animal-auto ballet happens. The first is that our fuzzy little friends actually plan the crossings during low-evening-traffic hours, but when the lights come over a hill or around a blind curve, they freak out and stand paralyzed in the path of certain doom. The second theory is that we have an entire branch of the marsupial family given to extreme depression. Their melancholy comes from the realization that they are just plain ugly. The kangaroo is cute and even funny, but the opossum looks like a freakishly large rat. Maybe they run out into the road simply to end it all.

Whether it’s counseling or instruction they need, the opossum needs something.

I see a final answer to the age-old imponderable of why the chicken crossed the road: The chicken must have crossed the road finally to show the opossum how it’s supposed to be done. Apparently the opossum is a slow learner.

Not Mutual Respect

Not Mutual Respect

Okay, I’m not arachnophobic. The thing is, I just don’t like spiders. Actually, they scare hell out of me. It’s a well-known fact that in one evening of unconsciousness, a single colony of spiders can devour a man. At least the spiders that skitter across my sleeping mind can do that.

I woke up one evening, from a dead sleep, and in the dark of night, a spider the size of my hand was lowering itself down to my bed, from the ceiling.

I screamed. Like a little girl, I screamed, and when the lights were switched on, he had made his escape. I’m not convinced that the spider was a figment of my dreaming mind; I think it just got away before it could be caught and identified.

Our bathroom–the one I most commonly use–is a spider sanctuary. One recently climbed out of the overflow drain on my sink–while I was washing my hands no less. This thing appeared to have been bred in the Brazilian Rain Forest, and it fought for survival like it had been wronged by me in a past life. With large quantities of water, I was able to wash it down the drain. To prevent this larger relative of Itsy Bitsy from climbing back up the water spout, I turned on scalding hot water and ran that down the drain until the water heater was probably empty.

I took a roll of toilet tissue out of our decorative toilet paper storage basket–this was just this evening–and two spiders (one black, one brown), climbed off of the role and tried to climb onto my hand. I wasn’t able to kill either one, but the fact that I tried means that they now have a personal vendetta against me.

This is summer, and I live in the high desert of California. We have spiders. It’s a fact of life. But I even had a Black Widow in my car the other day. How does that happen? I went to great trouble to spray much of my car interior with a very potent spider poison. I’m not yet convinced though, that it’s a spider-free zone.

I’m a person who develops clutter. Some would call me a pack-rat, while others would simply call me a slob. Either way, I’m afraid to put my hands into the clutter to straighten it up, because I know it’s probably spider breeding grounds by now.

Like I said, I’m not arachnophobic, but spiders and I have a mutual respect for one another. When I think of it though, I’m the only one doing the respecting. If there is an area in which I know they frequent, I leave them alone, but those little buggars don’t honor my space. They actually come looking for me.

When all is said and done, the little eight-legged fiends are probably just trying to keep me nervous and a little off-balance. To date, their efforts are working.

All Ye Who Enter Here

I've taught high school for 15 years, and certain things never cease to amaze me. I see the faces of exuberant youth. I see the faces of passion for a life they've only begun to experience. I see the faces of new pain, unexpected.

As I look at them, it occurs to me that they are all over-caffeinated, and most of them are on crack.

I'm inspired to abandon all hope for the future of the human race. If these English language irregulars are any indication of what is to come, we are doomed.

Out of Chair Experiences

Out-of-Chair Experiences

I had just gone to a bakery with my mother. She debated long over which cake to get for her dinner event. She found the perfect cake that would be a hit with everyone.

You must know that when a man is in a wheelchair, it is a constant negative in regard to going shopping with a female. The reason for this imperative is due to the fact that you become an animated shopping cart. She will say, “Just hold this.” Notice the lack of a request. Before you get to the register, she will be pushing your chair, and you will have both arms wrapped around every awkward and unwieldy item in the store.

The bakery we had gone to was on the second level of the two-story strip-mall. Instead of an elevator, there was a nearly block-long ramp. The cake was in a box, in my lap, and I began rolling somewhat briskly down to street level.

Almost at the bottom of the ramp was a metal grating for drainage, and the grillwork in the grating just happened to run in the same direction that my front wheels were rolling. When the front wheels suddenly stopped, I was propelled into the air by my downhill momentum. Before I landed, I heard my mother shout–and I quote–“Watch out for the cake!” No bones were broken, and the cake was miraculously unharmed.

A similar incident happened going up a ramp. The church choir had rehearsed the Christmas cantata for months. The staging involved us all being angels. We opted for the wingless variety of angels and were all in flowing white robes. Naturally my wheelchair was a bit awkward: The staging area was to be Heaven, we were to be the heavenly host, and one ministering spirit just happened to be crippled.

The music begins and the choir of the angels walks through the congregation singing the opening. The ramp to the platform is too steep for me to go up without assistance, due to space limitations. To avoid a stagehand appearing in the performance to help an angel get into heaven, I got helped into place a few minutes before the program actually started.

As I get to the ramp, I need to pop my front wheels onto it, so the footrest doesn’t dig into the ramp, then I can be pushed up. Without realizing this, a friend of mine took me on a fast run up the ramp that resulted in an angel with lifeless legs and no wings being catapulted into Heaven.

The collective gasp from the audience was sufficient.

I’ve gotten out of my car, on the first day of my new job. Cajon High School is empty of life, all but me and a custodian just going into one of the classes. I’ve arrived early so that I can get to my room and be ready for students. Being in a wheelchair causes me to always plan ahead for any eventuality. The last thing I want to happen is for there to be treacherous steps between me and my destination when the tardy bell rings.

I rolled up the slight grade to my building, and nearly to the level sidewalk that ran along the doorways, I realized the grade was more than slight. Gravity took hold, and I began to roll back down the path in reverse.

Don’t ask me how, but I listed to one side, and my left back wheel dropped off the pavement into the grass. The next moment or two involved a complex series of physical laws that put me on my back in the grass.

The sprinklers had just turned off, so I was on my back in the wet grass.

The aforementioned custodian came out of the classroom, and it didn’t take too much effort to make myself noticed. He helped me into my chair, I was on my way, and no one was the wiser.

My first van, equipped for use by a handicapped driver, had a standard wheelchair lift. The lift faced away from the side of the van. After raising the person sitting in the chair to a position level with the van floor, the wheelchair user backs into the van, the lift folds up into the van, and the door closes.

Electronic circuitry been much akin to witchcraft, my trust in its continued service is small.

The passenger riding with me had exited the van and was waiting for me behind the vehicle. The door opened, the lift unfolded and I rolled my chair onto the lift platform. When I pressed the button for the lift to lower me on to ground level, I was not expecting what happened instead. The platform somewhat rapidly folded back into the van, virtually throwing me onto the van floor, flat on my back.

When my passenger came around to my side of the van, to see what was taking me so long, she was startled to see the underside of my wheelchair, with my feet coming over the top. By this time, I was waiting for her discovery, calmly singing some innocuous show-tune. As expected, she found this amusing.

I worked for several years, teaching English in Europe. On the first day of class, I was sitting at a table, talking to one of my teenaged students before class began.

The disposition of my wheelchair is important to the rest of what happened.

European passages and door frames are less uniform in size and are often smaller than their American counterparts. I had the axles of my back wheels moved forward for a smaller turning radius and tip guards attached to avoid falling backward. I liked this configuration and was getting quite used to it. In the beginning, I panicked when I began to tip, but I got used to the guards and learned to appreciate them.

On the day in question, I had forgotten to put the tip guards on my chair when I left the car, to start my teaching day. While talking to my student, I wasn’t even slightly concerned when the chair began to tip back.

Put yourself in the student’s position. He was sitting and chatting with the new teacher from America, who happened to be wheelchair bound. Suddenly, mid-sentence, the teacher executes an almost perfect back flip. A bit alarming.

This student asked the obvious question: “What should I do?” I responded, “Help me up.” The class began without lasting effect from the incident, other than my red face.

These are only a few of the countless times this maneuver was performed by my chair, with me in it, and I won’t belabor the issue more than necessary.

The last out-of-chair experience I’d like to relate (certainly not the last that's happened) involves an automobile bumper and a security gate. The elements of the story I’ve already given reference to make the event sound treacherous, and it might have been.

Early in my handicap, I lived in an apartment with my mother. I had learned to drive an adapted vehicle, but I had to park on the street due to space limitations in our security garage.

If my mother was driving up in her car, as I unlocked the walk-in gate, she would frequently tell me, “Hold on to my car, and I’ll pull you into the lot.” She always looked a bit disappointed to hear me turn her down.

I took driver’s education in high school and distinctly remember the teacher’s admonition that we should never let someone on a bicycle hang on and be towed by our car. I wasn’t sure what damage could be done by this, but I figured that the same rule probably applied to wheelchairs.

Finally one evening, I decided to have a little fun and ride along. I went around behind her car and grabbed tightly onto the rear bumper. She went slowly, but stopping her or letting go quickly enough were both out of the question when my front wheels hit the security gate track and stopped.

Lying on the gate track, with my empty chair behind me, wouldn’t have been so bad, if my mother wouldn’t have jumped out of her car and yelled, “What should I do?” Before I could respond, the gate began to close.

Not to be daunted by a stressful situation, Mom reached into her car and grabbed the remote control opener for the gate and started clicking. To add insult to injury (or handicap, as the case may be), the whole incident struck her as being humorous. We now had a soundtrack of hysterical laughter.

Neighbors who heard my mother’s mirth from their apartments over the garage, were the ones who helped me back into my chair. My mother thanked them and disappeared into our apartment as quickly as could be considered acceptable. I however endured a chorus of genuinely concerned are-you-okays. I don’t remember whether or not I was telling the truth, when I told them I was.

My New Home at Home

Life in the Short Lane

To preface the rest of my comments, I should start by saying that I am five feet, ten inches tall. At one time that was considered “average” height. It made my existence slightly better as a young adult to always make sure to always add that I’m actually five feet, ten and a half inches tall. So you see I grew up and started adulthood as an above-average height young man.

Now in a wheelchair, I’m over a foot shorter. In my first chair, I decided to see how I stacked up and measured. The final verdict was four feet, two inches tall, seated. This was annoying, but a little bit fun to make mention of periodically, while in the company of friends. It’s a non sequitur that can get a fair chuckle.

My former and current stature understood, I can get on with the issue for which I brought it up in the first place.

I think the negatives somewhat outweigh the positives, but there are high points to low life. For one, if you don’t want to be noticed in a crowd, you can remain virtually invisible. The give away to the tall person looking for you would naturally be the people exclaiming, “Ouch!” and jumping out of your way.

In most smaller stores, aisles of products are often of medium height, so that a single clerk can monitor the whereabouts of customers. The wheelchair user glides through the store, and unless he comes to the front of the store to go from one aisle to the next, he has become a man of mystery.

With some satisfaction, I will say that clerks with more suspicious natures have been known to follow me in stores. They always try to affect a nonchalant air that says, “Oh, I always stroll the aisles to fight boredom,” or “I'm just trying to be available in case you need anything.”

I know the latter of these affectations isn’t anywhere close to true because anytime I really need something from a top shelf, I seem to be in the store alone.

Though anonymity is an important plus, there is a byproduct of growing down that actually makes the oppressive crowds at public holiday gatherings, carnivals and street fairs somewhat enjoyable. The group of friends with which I usually attend these events is equipped with various types. There are a few that, like myself, fall into the category of too-old-to-be-but-single-anyway. I’ve been given an awesome responsibility in this subgroup. Where tall women in short skirts are concerned, I am supposed to help categorize them as panty, thong, or none at all. This is my job but I’ve never been cad, or man, enough to find out on purpose, although it’s nice of my friends to include me in this way.

At this point in my discourse, I want to focus on the annoying aspects of life in the short lane. I’ve heard it said that short people are the last to get rained on but the first to drown, and this sets a perfect tone for the way I see things.

The way I see things is specifically what I want to talk about. I’m at gluteus maximus level, and even though there are rewarding moments, this is America, land of the obese. I have seen things no man should be witness to.

It is my observed perception that women with larger bottoms, either on purpose or out of sheer necessity, are women with animated bottoms. The ample hips of these women seem to take on a life of their own.

It happened that I was, unfortunately, rolling directly behind one of these ladies. I am not ashamed to say that I was frightened. My fear was that she might stop suddenly, without alerting the media, and it might spell my doom. Only people in wheelchairs and our diminutive brothers, known as Little People, understand these things.

I have witnessed more butt-scratching, underwear-pulling and adjusting for comfort than I could begin to tell. And I won’t even start on whale tales on people who couldn’t carry it off as remotely sexy.

Last but not least, I want to say a word about gas.

At my level, I get it first, and experience its lingering effects last. For a person of height, this situation is annoying or even disgusting. For me, it can be almost deadly. I’ve considered carrying a lighter with me, even though I don’t smoke, to have at the ready for those inevitable moments of gas. I could quickly light up, and there would be a sudden flash where the methane was the most concentrated. Or at least I imagine it that way.

I haven’t mentioned top shelves or clothes closets because of their obviousness, but hopefully I’ve helped you see some of my world.

On a trip to Europe, someone in my family handed me the video camera. There is a whole five minutes on the streets of Salzburg in which you see nothing but sightseers’ butts. This is my world.