Here are my medical records. Happy?

I met a woman tonight when I was out walking Claren. This woman, I'll call her Cheryl because that's her name, had a dog, too, and we let our pups meet and made some small talk.

We moved mighty quickly into big talk.

"So why are you in a wheelchair," she asked. Not content to just make me feel awkward, she also asked, "When was the last time you walked?" Because it is neat to make strangers relive the pain of their lives.

She wanted to know more stuff, too, and I told her whatever she asked.

Part of me, a very large part, wants to say, "Ummm, I’ll tell you if you tell me your most private, painful secret."

I accept that I have no medical privacy in doctors' offices. It is not a doctor’s appointment, unless med students come by to watch "the amazing ataxian. He doesn’t walk, doesn’t talk (clearly)."

I really just want to say, "None of your business" to Cheryl and her kind of people.

But then I think about how disabled I am and how badly I want to be cured and how that needs money, maybe from some random person who just donates to a cause because it’s a disease some polite, plucky little guy she talked to has.

Also, that might qualify as mean bitter.

See, I have no choice.

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.

No, I did not have a nice trip this fall

I thought that I had fallen in pretty much every conceivable way: leaning forward, leaning sideways, tipping over backward coming out of a subway car, being pulled over by a dog playing tug-of-war and countless other ways. Because of these experiences, I usually have an inkling I might fall. The incident this morning, however, took me by surprise.

I had gotten up about 4 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and because my eyes were used to the dark, I left the lights off. That was fine and I got beck to the bed afterward fine. I stood up out of my chair and out my hand on the bed to transfer into it. But in the dark I didn't know I was too far away from the bed so my hand rested on air and then I fell.

Well, first I slammed down chest-first on to the power chair joystick, then I fell to the ground. The joystick is actually just a little metal rod because the cover falls off so that kind of hurt, and it raised the question: What the heck is up with my guardian angel?

I decided it might be a fat couch potato named Doug, who watches my life unfold on a giant flat-screen TV. He enjoys the Three Stooges aspect of my daily falls, so he only lends a hand to keep me alive. Because if I died, he'd lose his entertainment. Of course he is slow getting off the couch, too, so a lot of my pratfalls happen before he can stop them.

It might also be a scrawny little runt of a guardian angel named Inga after Terri Garr's character in "Young Frankenstein." Not the sharpest tool in the shed, either. But she tries.

In the "put the candle back" scene in "Young Frankenstein, Frederick asks Inga to push as hard as she can on the other side of the bookcase. Inga, the character not the angel, backs up, gets up a full head of steam and runs at the bookcase. She succeeds in moving it.

This is, I imagine what happened this morning. Not strong enough to prevent the fall, Inga, the angel not the character, ran at me full force and knocked me so that the metal rod just raked across my chest instead of puncturing it.

Not too reassuring, huh?

I told my mom about the fall and I laughed at how horrified she looked "It isn't funny," she said. I pointed out that if it wasn't funny, I might cry until my tear ducts run dry (actually, I said I might kill myself, but now I am going with the tear thing).

You are freakin' kidding me

I thought I had heard it all from my para-transit provider. Lovers, pee-ers, late trips, "we didn't have a van" excuses. But this was a new one: a high point in freakin' stupidity.

My ride did not show up this morning. Not a shock, unfortunately. I called to get an ETA. First, I was put on hold for eight minutes. Then I called back and could not understand what the dispatcher said, so I asked my mom to call. She called me back and was on her way out to get me.

Apparently, the para-transit geniuses (PTG) sub-contracted my ride to a local cab company. The cab company, however, couldn't drive me for some reason. They sent my ride back to the PTG. But, and this is the key part, the PTG's printer or fax was out of toner, so they never got my ride.

Really.

It's good to know how important I am to the PTG.

Oh, and I think someone got fired today because of something I did. Her fault, though.

Some like it hot, and some are just lazy

On my ride home from work, the car thermometer said 98 degrees. It was pretty warm.

I came home and put on a T-shirt. I considered putting on shorts, especially because you get a little sweaty down there sitting all the time, but it is so much trouble.

I have to take off my shoes. That's easy; they're slip-ons. My socks are killer to take off. Claren can help but it still not easy. But I may use a wheelchair and be a bit of a dork, but no way am I wearing dress shoes and shorts. My pants aren't bad, either. Then I have to put on the shorts, new shoes, maybe socks. It takes like 15 minutes and wears me out.

I don't turn on the air conditioning because I am not a central air fan, too enclosed, but also because natural gas costs about a million bucks.

So I melt. Maybe this is how I keep my boyish figure.