transabled.org

Casted neighbor

by John - 9 February 2007

At about age 4 or 5, a neighbor kid, around my age, had both legs in full casts and a bar between them holding his casted legs in one position. I remember his parents carrying him out and setting him down in the yard. I think I also remember him peeing into a jar.

Depression and transability

by John -

Sean said:

From posts here and elsewhere, it would appear that many of us transabled have had to deal with depression. Me as well.

Without going into personal detail, I have had to deal with depression for years. This has not been much fun but in somewhat more recent times things have gotten considerably better for me partly because I am using an effective antidepressant. While I still have some aspects of depression to deal with I no longer am likely to see almost any stressful situation pessimistically and full of doom and gloom. My depression does have some relationship or impact to my transabled side:

Blindsimming, age 8

by Claire -

By age 8 I was in third grade and in class we had to choose a book to read. I chose a book about a blind boy. I was fascinated by the book and blindness, and started blindsimming daily. We had a bathroom that had no window, so when the light was off, it was pitch black in there. Every day for months I would take my shower and get ready for school in the pitch dark. I loved pretending to be blind, and I got quite good at finding my way around the bathroom and performing my daily grooming in the dark.

Sightings

by John - 8 February 2007

A couple early "sightings" of people with disabilities seem to have had impact, an amputee woman in a skirt, a high heel, crutches and one leg missing; somebody in a wheelchair, with both legs in long braces; a kid at school with an artificial leg and another with a hearing aid or aids. All these would be from about age 5 to 7 and, obviously, are just snippets of memory but have been with me all my life.

Prosthetic shop

by Rob -

my first memorys are from age 5-6 years old. We lived behind a prosthetic shop. As a young child I would see many disabled come and go. Both men and women. They were amputees, paras, I guess now most might have been polio, this was back in 1960-1965, wheelchairs, braces. I once walked around to the front of the shop, and in the window, a display of limbs, braces, shoes. I’m sure this is what sparked my fire. I felt that I should be one of these lucky people. I too needed to use crutches, be in a wheelchair.

One day I saw a man throwing trash out, after the shop closed I went over, looked in the can and found a AFO brace.I took it home. From that day on