Playing the Cripple Card

The visitors lower their voices as they enter the patio, where I've
rigged a work-station suitable to my wheel-chair. I've lost forty
pounds since June and quite frankly, look like hell warmed over. There
is a general stiffening of upper lips as the visitors prepare to not
show how they feel and, in doing so, do.

I play the Role, offering handshakes as weak as a politician's
promise, showing them what a Swell Time I'm having working on the
feather-light fragile aileron, it's diagonals of shish-kabob spears
neatly triangulated into gobbets of urethane glue. There is also a
Sanding Station and, by deft backing and filling, a Routing Station
where my wheel-chair brings me into battery with the Routing Table,
allowing me to produce an elegantly accurate Nose Rib, the score card
showing 26 DOWN meaning I have only 20 to go, each produced by the
Heroic Cripple, wasting away in his wheeled chair.

After the Visitors have swamped me with unspoken pity along with a few
shoulder chucks, a powerful thrust of my legs disengages me from my
Work Station so I can pop to my feet and stride into the house,
offering all a cup of Hospitality and Good Cheer which, by custom, can
NOT be refused.

Orange Gator-ade. As unpalatable a drink to ever be invented, forced
upon the ailing when the are required to down sixteen different pills,
some several times a day, throwing my body's chemistry out of whack
but which may be restored by a cup (eight fluid ounces) of Gator-ade,
which I down with an heroic grin that turns into a belly laugh as my
Visitors follow suit. Come to visit me, there's dues due to be paid.
Yeah, I've got cancer. Yeah, I look like hell. But let's not make a
big deal of it, okay?

One lady gags on the Gator-ade and refuses to finish it. Everyone
else downs the tipple with a brave gulp while I explain about
electrolytic balance and maintaining the proper PT/INT ratio that
ensures the drugs will target the tumor and not my tattoos. Or
whatever. The lady wins my praise for refusing to drink out of
politeness something that tastes positively evil. Then I show them my
Work Stations.

I can only work standing up for about twenty minutes but seated, I can
put in an hour or more. And there's a lot you can do in an hour.
Assuming you are allowed to WORK for that hour and not forced to
exchange chit-chat with a buncha folks determined to Do Good by
visiting the Cripple.

They stay about half an hour and I see them off, standing, waving from
the patio gate. And feel damn glad to get back into my wheel-chair.

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The weight loss is what captures the most attention. Going from 220
to 180 in such a short time leaves you seriously out of proportion,
in that your forearms which once rivaled Pop-eyes and for the same
reason (rowing, guys. Popeye was a sailorman. And so was I, 'way
back when) are skinny as sticks, the scars suddenly prominent.

But 180 is not a catastrophe, especially now that the loss appears to
have flattened out. I weighed 185 when I played high-school football
and thanks to dengue fever I was 167 when I was stationed at DaNang.
At 180 I'm good for four laps around the house (aided by a cane)
spread over a day's time, a distance of about 500 feet. At 180 I'm
good for repairing a failed light switch and dozens of other minor
house-hold chores.

The wheel-chair is more than a joke. It's extremely practical when I
have to haul my bod down to the lab where I may have to wait an hour
and you either bring your own chair or sit on the floor. Plus, it
makes a jim-dandy parts-carrier. Wheel-chairs come with pockets and
mine now has a few more. New cord for the vacuum cleaner? No
problem, as I load the soldering iron into one pocket and the
necessary tools into another.. and then PUSH the wheel-chair to the
job-site. (I can't lift very much but I can PUSH about two hundred
pounds :-)

Visitors? Usually welcome. But there's lotsa chores needs doing and
not a cripple in sight.

-R.S.Hoover