Blog > Early memories > Sophie’s somewhat “fuzzy” memories
Sophie’s somewhat “fuzzy” memories
Written by Sophie on Monday, February 5, 2007
Sean asked me to write about some of my early memories in regards to my transabledness. My memories are memories that have emerged since I discovered my feelings were legitimate so some of them are still rather hazy.
All my life I had this attraction to medical stuff, mostly stuff in relation to wheelchairs. My family and I just assumed it was to do with my desire to be a nurse. I sometimes wonder now if my desire to be a nurse was just a way to refocus my BIID. I would watch every single medical program, documentary, soap. I watched Middlemore (a doco in NZ), Emergency, ER, Westpac Rescue, Starship Children’s Hospital (can’t remember the name of the actual program). I can remember while watching one of those kiwi programs a story about a man who had fallen from a tree and broken his back. This would have been when I was 9. It showed us him in the hospital being measured for his TLSO brace and then starting physiotherapy in it. I had this strong desire to be like him that I simply couldn’t explain. I didn’t tell my parents because as Sean said about his feelings, I didn’t quite understand any of it myself. In a way it’s a good thing I didn’t tell my parents.
When I was a couple of years older a movie called Suddenly was aired on TV. It was that movie where Kirsty Alley got hit by a bus and became a paraplegic. I had such an attraction to the wheeling guy in the movie and I had this uncontrollable desire inside of me to be that person. Independent, nice wheelchair, cool gloves, confident. That movie was what really got me consciously thinking about wheelchairs and me using one.
Since I had grown up in a strict Christian family I didn’t think any of these desires where feelings that I could even allow myself to feel, so I squashed them down and did my best to forget about them. I will try to elaborate more in the future as I have moments of inspiration but at this point what I’ve written here is all that I solidly know.
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5 Comments
2 On 23 January, 2009, Sophie said:
Kirsty Alley didn’t really play a successful business woman. Her life was screwed up when she had her accident. It was pretty much your stereotypical “my life is over” story.
3 On 24 January, 2009, Claire said:
I remember the Kirsty Alley movie! I was all over it. :) She was a waitress and waited on the wheeler dude.
I so wished to be a nurse or a caregiver myself, to help those people… until I figured I rather wish to be ‘those people’ :))
My movie movie was My Left Foot with Daniel Day-Lewis.
I always find myself perk up even to this day when seeing a PWD either on the TV in a documentary, TV Show or movie.
Though oddly enough – Joe from family guy never really sparked any BIID attacks. *Shrugs*
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1 On 23 January, 2009, Ronald said:
I remember that movie, also. I think it dates back to the 80′s or early 90′s when it was quite trendy to feature a disabled character on television or the movies.
It seems that almost every disabled character then was a young, pretty woman in a wheelchair, and some type of super person at the top of their profession and social group. Does the wheelchair only serve as something to make superwoman less threatening? Was this to evoke pathos in the audience, eventhough we are not supposed to feel sorry for that person? Is it more tragic because misfortune befell a pretty girl rather than a less pretty one?
(and misfortune should not befall a pretty girl as the sadness may make them less feminine?)
There was the odd, blind pretty girl, but that was about it.
Makes me wonder about amputees. Is an amputee somehow grotesque? Would she be less of a woman missing a shapely leg? Could she not love somebody as passionately as a two armed woman? Is asymetry (sic??) such an ugly thing?
I know of only 2 amputee characters, Chery Darling in “Grindhouse “(purely for satiracal purpose) and Svetlana on the series “The Sopranos” who served only to show how so many other characters on the show were mired in self pity.
We are supposed to be in some new age of enlightenment, yet the same old prejudices seem to still come at us.