Raising a Ruckus: Down With Fun


You know what I really hate about being paralyzed? I mean, hate with every bone in my broken body? You have to be so bleeding responsible — all the time.

You have to be at all times cautious, careful, prudent, always erring on the safe side, and for goodness sakes, don’t forget to take your meds or practice perfect hygiene. You have to script out your every movement in advance. “OK, how am I going to get from this chair to that toilet seat five feet away without slipping, falling, or rubbing too hard against the seat surface and causing a skin breakage?” You know what I’m talking about. In fact, it happened to me just last week. A wound on my hip that took two years and plastic surgery to heal became magically unhealed last week because I had the audacity to hit the toilet seat at an angle and not straight down, helicopter-style. What an idiot! How irresponsible can you get? Buy a lift harness, for God’s sake, so you can make a gentle four-point landing on that seat. Don’t you know anything?

Want to just throw caution to the wind and go on a road trip to Vegas or the Indian casino in your area? Sure, but first, get out a calculator and measure exactly how long you can sit in a car without passing out and call the motel and book their only accessible room two months in advance and oh yeah, forget about having more than one drink at the roulette table or you will suddenly lose your balance, fall under the table, then goons will roll you to the curb, spouting, “Don’t come back, you wobbly drunk. You scare the other customers.”

The thing is, it’s downright un-American to play it so safe, to obey every lock-step rule of crippled living and live a completely risk-averse life. America is about taking big chances, and if fate is in your corner, reaping ridiculously big rewards. If you were Bill Gates in a wheelchair, you would have never dropped out of college and started a software company with a loan from your dad. The prudent thing for Bill would have been to stay in school, spend every Saturday night studying, become an accountant, and get a steady job with benefits working for the nutcase who started that software company.

But even if you are not Bill Gates, did you dream at 9 years old to always be on time, go to bed at 10 p.m., never miss a math assignment, and never splurge on a double bacon cheeseburger or — if your penny-pinching dad would cough up the bucks — a Maserati Gran Turismo? No, you dreamt of going to college and staying drunk or high the entire four years, then acquiring enough cash to buy the biggest house, biggest car, the wife with the biggest bosom, and walk into Best Buy and announce, “I’m gonna buy that 80-inch flat screen TV, a couple of iPhones, a computer I can take swimming, and if they have it, a 12-burner barbeque grill just to see if it’s hot enough to fire pottery.” Indulging your every desire, from 30-liter bottles of Coke to a vacation home in Hawaii, is what makes America run. If you don’t over-consume and hit the limit on your credit cards, America as we know it will collapse. Who’s a bigger celebrity in this gluttonous oasis, Donald Trump or the quiet, responsible librarian who wears the same matching sweater set every Wednesday? I rest my case.

So, people of the chair, especially those over 35, let go of all of that and learn to think small, not big, slow, not fast. Live in the smallest place you can find so you don’t have to move around so much. It’s prudent to conserve your energy. Stay at home as much as possible. It’s prudent to avoid transferring and other forms of unnecessary movement. And for goodness sakes, do not get a high-stress job that might make you a bundle. Stress is very bad for those of us with compromised bodies. It’s prudent to start a home-based business selling plastic seat protectors.

Sure, you can lead a fulfilling, fully pre-scripted life. Lifers in prison do it all the time. Just proceed oh so carefully. Remember, the dull-as-dirt turtle won the race, not that wascally wabbit.


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