Laughing at My Nightmare (11 page)

Rule number two: Nobody is ever out. Every batter gets to bat once an inning, run the bases, and score. Also, there was no score being kept. Are you kidding me?

That rule caught me way off guard. This was becoming no fun, and we hadn’t even started playing. And when we did eventually begin, it got so much worse. I was the first player up to bat, and my dad helped me hit a slow ground ball to a kid in a wheelchair at shortstop. This particular kid had some kind of disorder that caused his head to be constantly moving in all directions, and it was very obvious he didn’t really know what was going on as his mom moved him to the ball and picked it up to put in his lap. Meanwhile, I was booking it down the line to first. I stopped at first base, kind of disappointed that his mom hadn’t tried to throw me out. Although it’s probably good that she didn’t, because the kid playing first was playing with the dirt. For a second, I stayed on first and thought, “Wow. This is stupid.” And then it got even stupider. The fans, coaches, and parents helping out were still cheering for me. It took me a moment to realize what was going on, but then it clicked, they wanted me to keep running the bases. Nobody was even going to try to get me out. So I reluctantly began towards second base, not even bothering to go fast, proceeded on to third, right past the kid with the ball on his lap, and eventually made my way to home plate. It was the most degrading and unrewarding feeling I had ever felt up to that point in my life. Everyone worked together to
let
me get an inside the park home run on a ball that barely made it past the pitcher’s mound. All the parents and coaches emphatically congratulated me like I was safe at home because of my chair-driving ability. I didn’t have to say anything to my dad; he knew I was completely done with this league.

Unfortunately, he made me stick out the rest of the season to teach me the lesson of finishing what you start, but we spent most of the games making fun of how god-awfully fake and unrealistic the games were. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Challenge League is a great program for lots of kids; it provides a unique experience for many disabled kids who all really enjoy it, but the fact that it felt so fake to me made it impossible to enjoy.

A couple years later, my parents managed to talk me into joining a “Challenger” style, bowling league. To bowl, I use a ball ramp that is available at most bowling alleys. Basically I just line it up by bumping it with my wheelchair and then push the ball down. Challenger bowling was fun for a couple weeks, until a kid in my lane had a severe seizure during laser bowling. That was the end of me trying to participate in sports leagues with my wheelchair brethren. I just couldn’t fit in or have fun with those kids. I’m probably an asshole.

chapter 20

the pimple days

I attended Freedom High School in Bethlehem, PA, which was located a mere 300 yards from my middle school. For most of my life, the school had simply been a building, a landmark. My friends and I used to skateboard on the staircases that surrounded the premises. Well, I watched them skate. Pat and Andrew and I spent many days smashing tennis balls at each other on the Freedom tennis courts.

Entering the building as one of its 2,000-something students for the first time my freshman year was an eye-opening experience. I was captivated by the immensity of it all and felt much older all of a sudden, if for no other reason than all the people around me looked much older.

Whenever anyone asks about the buttons on my wheelchair, my automatic response is, “That button is for the rocket launchers.” That way, if the person replies, “Wait, really?” I know we are never going to be friends.

I took it upon myself to make sure that my cousin Becca and I were together as much as possible in high school. Because of my disability, the law says the school has to put together a plan of all the adaptations I needed for each school year. Throughout all four years of high school, my disability plan had a clause that stated that I could request to have Becca in my classes if it was possible to coordinate our schedules. We justified it by saying that Becca was the only one who knew how to help me out, which was bullshit, but it allowed us to be together!

Another clause of my disability plan stated that I was allowed to leave class five minutes early before lunch, and five minutes early at the end of the day, in order to avoid the ridiculously packed hallways of our high school. I was also allowed to leave class to go to the nurse’s office, which is where I went to use the bathroom. Jesus Christ, did we abuse those privileges.

During high school, I never once went to the nurse’s office to use the bathroom, because that would mean the middle aged school nurse would have to handle my shwang, which in my mind was far worse than holding it all day. Besides, I can hold my pee like it’s my job. However, none of my teachers knew this, so when Becca and I got tired of sitting in class, I politely asked to be excused to the nurse’s office, and Becca would escort me because I said I needed her to come with me, and nobody ever questioned that line of reasoning. Then we would walk around the school until we felt like we were pushing the limits of how long it should take me to pee.

Similarly, we often came up with ridiculous reasons for why I needed to leave earlier than five minutes before the end of class at the end of the day, such as, Shane has to get his jacket on, or the elevator is broken so we have to go outside and around the school to get downstairs, or Shane has to pick up something from the nurse. We could pretty much do whatever the hell we wanted by involving the nurse’s office in our excuse. Teachers automatically believed any reason I needed to go to the nurse, which I had marked up as a plus for being disabled.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t really mature very much in high school, but I had a good time!

In ninth grade I ran for class president and had to give a speech to the 600 kids in my class to persuade them to vote for me. Up to this point in my life, only my close group of friends knew that I was a completely normal person that happened to be in a wheelchair. Everyone else assumed that my wheelchair meant I was socially inept. Anyway, I wanted to start high school by making people aware that I was not either of those things. The following is an exact copy of the speech I gave on election day. I almost got in trouble because I didn’t read the speech I had handed in for the teachers to check. I don’t know why I still have this saved.

sup im shane. i like to skate, i run track and field and i am on the freshman swimming team. at least.… i was until the accident.. anyway my buddy called me and told me a tsunami was about to hit and wipe out all humanity. so i decided to grab my surf board. holy hell was that a mistake. while on a 75 foot wave i crashed into a cement wall. it is still unknown how and why there was a cement wall in the middle of the ocean, but that is not an important detail. when i awoke 4 years later from my coma, i was informed that i would never be able to walk again. i became a better man because of it. and in case you are stupid, the entire previous section is completely fictional. but for real i am in a wheelchair and if you decide to judge me for it, i will not hesitate to run you over until I’m sure you’ve stopped breathing. Vote for me!

People went crazy, and I won the election by a landslide.

High school turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated. When I was in eleventh grade, I signed up for dual-enrollment classes at the local community college because I wanted to “get ahead” and be done with school as fast as possible. I had to take two placement tests, reading and writing, before they would let me sign up for Intro to Psychology. I was very nervous because these were
college
placement tests and I was only in eleventh grade, but they were ridiculously easy.

Here is a sample question from the test:

Which sentence uses a period correctly?

A. I. Like. To. Eat. Pizza …

B. I like to eat pizza.

C. Pick B

D. Seriously, B is the correct answer, and you should pick it.

I finished the tests and printed out the results; I got a 100 percent on the writing and a 98 percent on the reading because the story about salmon migration patterns made me want to break the computer with my face.

Then, I had to take the test results to an old woman at her desk on the other side of the room so she could review my scores and tell me if I could sign up for the class I wanted. I drove over and awkwardly handed her the paper because I can’t really hand people things; I just kind of push them off my lap. She took it and said, “Okay, honey, let’s see how you did,” as if I was a toddler that had just used the toilet for the first time.

Her face instantly changed to astonishment and she said, “Wow, I didn’t expect this!”

“Uh, what?” was my reply. Was she joking? The salmon I had read about could have passed those tests. Then she realized how rude she had sounded and quickly added, “We just don’t usually get scores like this! Congratulations!”

I know my body looks fucked up, but I honestly feel like there is no physical indication that would lead people to think I’m mentally disabled, and scenarios like the above are funny, but incredibly annoying. But instead of letting it bother me too much, I had fun with the misperceptions many people had of me.

That same year there was a day when my friend Jon rode the short bus back to my house with me to chill after school. We were bored so he suggested we go on chatroulette.com. For those of you who have never heard of chatroulette (come out from under your rock), it is basically a web site where you can video chat with random people from all around the world. A majority of the people who use the site use it to satisfy their exhibitionist fantasies. In other words, you get paired up with lots of old, fat dudes jerking off. I wish I was joking. However, every once in a while you get the opportunity to have an actual conversation with someone from another state/country, which can be pretty interesting.

We went on chatroulette to see if we could find any good-looking girls to talk to, and to neither of our surprise, it was mostly dicks. Whenever we did come across fully clothed, normal people they usually said something along the lines of “What is wrong with that kid’s head?” because like I mentioned before, my head is disproportionately large compared to my body. A douche bag British kid asked me to pull my sleeves down because my skinny arms were creeping him out. We decided I would scare away any girls that we might potentially have the chance of talking to, so Jon positioned the laptop so only Jon could be seen in the chat window, our plan was to introduce me if someone seemed cool enough to not flip out.

Using this method, we came across a girl who looked to be about our age, and Jon started making small talk with her. I think she was from New York, but I could be wrong. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but she wasn’t ugly; her looks really had nothing to do with it at this point, we just wanted to talk to someone other than an old man penis. She told him she was bored too because she had to babysit her sister until her parents got home.

I whispered to Jon to introduce me and let me come in to the video. Jon was a jokester, so he capitalized on this opportunity to do something funny. He told the girl that he happened to also be babysitting someone—his mentally disabled cousin. Initially, I think he just said it to fuck with me.

When he turned the camera to me, I put my T-Rex arms close to my chest, crossed my eyes, and tipped my big head to the side. She completely bought it; there was no reason not to. I can make myself look very deranged. She also expressed how bad she felt for me and how nice Jon was for babysitting me. I sat there pretending to drool.

To be completely honest, I don’t know which one of us thought of our next move, so I will say we both thought of it/agreed to do it. Jon said something along the lines of “Yeah we are on here trying to find some boobs because this little guy has never seen them, but we’re only finding old men on here.” I made a sad face.

Try to understand how hard we were both resisting laughter at this point. The girl replied that I was so cute and that all the old men also repulsed her. In the heat of this comedic moment, Jon asked her if she felt like showing his mentally challenged cousin her boobs. I didn’t know what to do so I just kept my mentally challenged face on and tried my absolute hardest not to laugh; I just wanted to see her reaction to his question, and then I would stop and reveal that I was messing with her and hopefully she would find it funny.

As if this whole situation was completely normal and happened to this girl all the time, she stood up, took the laptop into her bathroom, AND TOOK HER SHIRT OFF. Hello boobs.

Jon fell off the chair he was sitting on. I started noncoherently apologizing repeatedly in between laughs of disbelief as I closed the Internet browser as fast as my T-Rex arms would let me.

I had just pretended to be mentally challenged to make a girl show me her boobs. I don’t know if it gets worse than that in terms of abusing a disability.

We sat there stunned for a lengthy amount of time. Then we decided we were the worst people on earth and promised never to tell anyone ever.

chapter 21

an ode to darla

My insurance company covers a new wheelchair every six years. I’m guessing they didn’t just pull that number out of thin air—although it wouldn’t surprise me—but I’m sure there was some research that found a wheelchair’s life expectancy to be about six years. Imagine if that was your job: find out how much damage this wheelchair can take before it falls to pieces. I want that job. But I digress … (God, I love that phrase.)

Midway through high school, I became eligible for a new chair. For a few weeks, my parents, as well as my physical therapist, argued with me about getting a new one. Believe it or not, I really didn’t like changing wheelchairs. I pretty much hated it. But when I told people this, it took them some time to understand where was coming from. I said the word
new
but they heard the word
better
. However, new was not always better when it came to the seating arrangement that was such a crucial aspect of my everyday life.