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.

I guess your comment reminds me of those people. (If you take offense to that, I apologize.)

It was strange because I had never encountered anyone with those disabilities or conditions before, yet I had a fascination with them, as if I was reading something about myself — yet, it wasn’t about “me.” Today, I realize that it was probably BIID tugging away at me.

I remember a library incident, before I knew what manifestation of BIID I had. The library was selling off some of its books, and I became engrossed in the only book about disability for sale, called “Lisa’s World” (or something like that). It was about a deaf girl and how she learned to cope with her disability and how she is no different from everyone else.

Even though I’d sold a lot of my childhood books since then, that is one of the few books I refused to sell up to this day. Some other ones that I never sold are related to disability as well, even fictional ones (like one from a horror novel where the victim was so frozen with fear that she was rendered completely paralyzed and mute, with no physical explanation).

I wonder who else around here has some library tales to tell?

P.S. Card catalogues were in use sometimes in some libraries, but otherwise we were using DOS-based computers… They do seem a bit more efficient than some systems nowadays, haha.

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.

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.