Where's my spandex, cape and utility belt?

My favorite superhero is Daredevil. When he was a boy, he pushed an old man out of the way of a speeding truck, which was carrying chemicals. The truck hit young Matt Murdock, and the chemicals blinded him but his other senses were heightened. He can tell if someone is lying by the person's heartbeat or smell. He sees with radar, and of course he has great balance.

I am afraid that in reality a disability has no silver linings.

Sure I get a nice parking spot. But you know what I do? I compare myself to others who take the disabled parking spot near my condo. It would be nice for me to park in because I can just roll easily downhill to my condo. Otherwise I have to wheel uphill to get home.

But I rarely get it. I have never seen this one family because they park their van there and leave it unmoved all week. They drive it on Saturdays. But mom has said there is no one with a visible disability. The other person who parks there seems to mainly be overweight. It lengthens her walk to park in the disabled spot but allows her to open her doors as wide as she wants because the spot has open areas on each side.

I am the only one in a chair, so I figure that spot should be mine. If you just use it to keep a car around for a once-a-week drive, that shouldn't qualify. And if I knock the Twinkees out of my diet, I'll still be in a chair.

See, I am a jerk about it, so I'm not sure the parking spot qualifies as a benefit.

A lot of the "benefits" are in the kind of person I am. Obviously my disability has played a role in that development.

I consider myself stronger than most people. My brother-in-law found himself with cancer about few years ago. He went through radiation and chemo and surgery and all the awful things that accompany them.

I wished I had his cancer instead of him. Not just because I think cancer would be easier to deal with than FA. (Sorta, sometimes.) Or because I think I am less valuable than him (I do think this mostly because he has as family, and I figured I am already fucked with FA, why not add a little cancer?) Mainly, though, I just know I could handle it — awful as cancer is.

I read an article in The Washington Post a while back about an injured player on the Redskins. “Asked if the injury was better yesterday, [lineman Joe Salave'a] smiled and said, "My 'better' might be a little different than yourself. . . .’”

So is mine.

Every day part of me hurts. A toe, a finger, a shoulder, my back, my head, and that's just the physical pains. None of us have time for me to list my emotional problems. Every day, though, I go to work. It will get better after I move about, I tell myself. Or it is just something FA –related, so there really is no reason to call in sick.

One of my sisters wrote an essay about how I was an opportunity for grace for others, how letting people help you is not easy but it offers so much to others.

She is so right.

I think I force people to think beyond themselves. A little girl not even as tall as my chair offered to help push me through the grass; this same little girl acted like a little brat minutes later to someone else.

This morning, Claren pooped in a little ditch off the sidewalk, so I picked it up but was having real difficulty getting back on the sidewalk. This guy came over, helped me to the sidewalk and continued his morning walk.

I think the presence of someone who relies on humaneness to make it through the day makes people stop and think and hopefully be kind.

Being uncomfortable for much of my day has also made me empathetic. I am still not sure if that is good or bad. Sometimes I feel broken by someone else’s sadness or pain. Or I feel helpless and frustrated because I can’t do a thing. The worst part of it is that the very thing that makes me empathetic — the disability — is what makes me unable to help. I can do very little phyhsically for someone; I think that frurstrates me more.

And of course, there is my eye level, which leaves me staring at gals' chests. Good or bad?

I am proud of all these things, except the gals' chests thing. But I'd give all my comics, baseball cards and action figures to try to become the same kind of good person, but one who could walk.