A Change In Perspective

I was working a job. It was going to be  a long 10 hour day. I was going to be walking miles and miles in a convention center hall rigging a corporate show It's a space maybe 2 times the size of a football field.

One of my jobs is very physically demanding. In all the time I've done the job I've never seen a guy in a wheel chair do the ground rigging part of it. So I was surprised. And I watched him do the job but struggle with things I've never thought of before. He had to lock the wheels of the chair so he could bend at the waist to write on the floor in chalk as we marked out the points. Otherwise he might roll away or his actions would turn the chair. He had to manage the things in his lap because he couldn't put stuff in his pockets easily.

He was young. Under 30 I think. And I made a point over the entire day I worked with him never to whine about how my feet hurt or my legs were tired from standing. It took 7 hours to mark out over 350 points on the ground. But having the guy in the wheel chair right there made me shut the fuck up.

I didn't ask what happened to him but listening to the banter with him and his co workers I learned a lot.

He was injured in a car accident of some kind. A driver hit him. I don't know if he was in a car or on a motorcycle or walking. When one of his co workers was giving him shit he started his retort with, "When I was laying on the pavement with a broken back..." That was a jarring statement to hear.

He was relatively new to the chair. I think the accident happened in the past year. This job was one of his first gigs back. He also said he can't drive. After an accident like that the state pulls your driver's license. You have to retake the driving test in the new vehicle with hand controls since you can't operate a regular car without using your feet.

Also, he had no feeling below the waist. None. So that means... He had catheters inserted into his urethra. Which means there was a bag of waste somewhere attached to that catheter. I once wore a bag with a tube on me for a play I did where I was a war veteran. It was filled with water but it definitely changes how I moved and felt. I could take it off when the play was done. He's going to be decades in that chair.

But worse than catheters, NO SEX. The equipment no longer works. That is horrifying to me. He has a girlfriend, but I don't know how the whole sex issue is worked out.

He is a good guy  with a good attitude. I could see he was frustrated at times with his situation and inability to do things, but overall he was coping well. And I did wonder what I would do in that situation. To go from able and active to being in a wheel chair.

I wonder if after his accident someone said the platitude, "God has a plan for you." Or "This happened for a reason." If someone said that to me I'd hit them. It's not a plan, it's an accident and deities shouldn't want people to become crippled. I'd be angry in that situation.

If anything, I'm changed. For how long, I don't know. But when I whine about being inconvenienced by some small thing in life, I know it could always be worse.