Dear Wheelchair: We Need to Talk

Dear Wheelchair:

We need to talk. Yes, I know: no conversation in history starting off that way ever ended well. But there are some things we need to hash out.

We’ve been together nearly half a decade. Wow, that’s significant. Five years is the length of cohabitation most health insurance policies require before a chair user can get a new chair. Not that I’m in the market for another, dear. I’m just sayin’…

Now, babe, don’t cry. Need some reassurance? You are amazing at giving me my own space. I mean, you are the opposite of clingy. Of course, I would expect nothing less from someone named Torque Storm. Not exactly the moniker of a clinging vine.

But sometimes you’re just a little too laissez–faire. I’ve got an image to uphold, you know. People see a gimp girl in a wheelchair and they immediately assume I’m “wheelchair bound.” (Stop snickering. The B&D of our private life is nobody’s business.) They’re convinced that we’re perpetually fused together. That I shower in you, sleep in you. That I never transfer out of you into a theater seat. Can you imagine what they’d say if they saw me taking a few steps with my walker? Good God, the fallout that would cause.

This affects your image, too, you know. You and your progenitors have established your reputation as symbols of failure, as prisons on wheels. What would they say if it leaked out that you’re really enablers, huh? Enablers of mobility, of freedom…of independence, even! What if I went to the press and told them the truth: that I never would have gotten an education, made a career or left the dang house without you in my life? Two can play at that game, my friend.

Come on now, baby. I didn’t mean to be cruel. You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. So what if you’re not my first, or even my fifth? So what if my chair throughout college cradled my backside like no other? It didn’t mean anything. It was nothing compared to what we have. We’re going to be together forever, just you wait and see.

Or at least until insurance says I can roll you to the curb.

Disabilities, Bad Attitudes and Mental Flights of Fancy

I try to live my life by a few simple maxims:

“Strive for balance in all things.”

“Never eat more than you can lift.”

“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”

It took me years to see the wisdom in that last one. I mean, severe pain and joint damage of rheumatoid arthritis – my particular challenge – are pretty darn dramatic. Having shoulders, hips and knees severed from me and new ones bolted in have proven to be a bit of a distraction.

But I think I’ve finally seen the light and rehabilitated my attitude.

Now when I go to a new restaurant and all of the tables are high with bar stools, I focus on my attitude. Even though I spend the meal staring into my companions’ knees, I mentally try to levitate. That doesn’t actually allow me to socialize with my friends or even hear much of the conversation, but it cleans out all of the “badness” in my mind.

My rehabilitation also comes in handy when I’m traveling and need to catch a taxi. Whether I attempt a street hail or try to schedule a ride by phone, getting a wheelchair-accessible taxi is next to impossible. But that’s OK. Although my trip then requires numerous buses and is four times longer than a cab ride, I’m zipping along through traffic – only in my mind, of course.

If I stay in a hotel or at a relative’s home and there’s no wheelchair-accessible roll-in shower, no problem. As I take my sponge bath at the sink, I imagine myself under a luxurious rain-style shower head. Ah, the lovely flowing water…

You see, I’ve come to realize that being marginalized from society happens not because humankind continues to build restaurants, malls, theaters, offices, transportation and housing with physical barriers. Oh, no. The problem lies within the mind of each and every person with a disability. Fix the attitude and you’ve fixed the problem.

Excuse me -- must run. I need to adjust my attitude up a flight of stairs now.