transabled.org

I was 15, and the small college where my Dad was head football coach (and that I later attended) opened a beautiful new library. The cheapskate head librarian had this brilliant idea to hire young kids, for like $2 an hour to lug books back and forth all day from the old library to the new. My Dad got me and about 10 of my pals in on it. We carried books back and forth for about 3 days and each got about 30 bucks or so, and it was hard work, even for for young football players.

Well, in one stack of books I carried (the school had a large and excellent school of nursing and it was from that section) there was a book titled something like physical care for quadriplegics and was nothing but pictures from some rehab hospital in Vancouver Canada. Actual paras and quads, getting in and out of bed, bathtubs, being lifted, transfers, you name it, it was in there. I wanted that book! I wondered how I could take it and not get caught.

It stayed on my mind for years, and when I enrolled as a student 3 years later, I checked it out. At its due date I went in and said I misplaced it. They made me pay for it. But not brand new price, because it was old and hadn’t been checked out for 2 years, so for I think $10 it was mine. I kept it untill I got married and was moving out of my bachelor pad in Tempe, Arizona. I sure wish I had it back.

I wasn’t quite that sophisticated at that age, but I devoured every story about disabled people that I could get my hands on. I could never get enough though!

We had a set of “installment” medical encyclopedias. The “B” volume automatically opened to the picture of the little boy in braces. Wonder how that happened?

I did that at that age too! I would go to my school library, (which was fairly large) and read up on wheelchairs, spinal cord injuries, care for paralysis…every time I could get down there, I’d go to a table in the very back and just indulge myself in the book. Of course, I always loved the fiction stories too. But yes, I did the same thing. :)

Ahhh, days at the library, I remember them well. I never had trouble getting my parents to drop me off at the library and letting me stay for hours. Nothing bad or deviant could happen at the library.

You youngin’s may not know about the old fashioned card catalog. I remember the speed and efficency I could research and cross reference topics that interested me.

In middle school, the local library was a manse that had been converted. There were plenty of nooks and corners for private reading.

Of course, the building was TOTALLY inaccessible :)

I’ve still at least a half dozen books in my home that were procured from the library and “lost” and paid for.

As soon as I had access to university medical libraries I became an avid reader of the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Mostly I was interested in innovative amputation techniques. The most frequent topic along these lines was methods of creating a functional claw from a badly mangled hand. For example, if all the fingers are lost one can make a split between metacarpal bones. At a time when I was teaching practical chemistry classes to undergraduates, one of my students had such a claw, which she was able to use very effectively.

Gordo: You’re going to have to try a LOT harder than that if you want to offend me :)

I seem to get those kind of comments more often when I’m wearing leg braces, such as at a party meeting new people. Something along the lines of “You manage those very well”. I just take it as a compliment.

@Chloe, yes it’s meant as a compliment, but it’s also quite patronising, and the worst thing is that people saying these things don’t realise just how patronising they are. I’m glad you can ignore that aspect of it. I can’t, not anymore

I actually work in a library and so you can imagine how hard it can be not to peek into a book if it’s about disabled people, especially wheelchaired ones! :))) But I always take my stolen moments if so… ;)
As for memories, I remember we had a book at home when I was small, a Children’s Encyclopedy and there was a whole side in it about people with special needs, also illustration. I re-read it many many times myself, alone and I always imagined me in those pictures, sitting in a chair like that, being pushed and walking in the streets with a white cane…