Laughing at My Nightmare (7 page)

Pat: NO. We’re playing. Mom said we could.

Brother: [gets gun] I’m playing video games now.

Pat: You’re playing video games now. We love you.

My experience with paintball guns was even further limited. I once found an unpopped paintball (didn’t know that’s what it was at the time) near my house and thought it was cool, a little secret squishy treasure. I asked my brother to hand me the unknown object and began massaging it between my fingers because the soft sack of mystery felt amazing.

It popped, scaring the shit out of me, and covering my lap and wheelchair in red paint. My mom was thrilled.

Anyway, my daydreams about massive paintball fights seem kind of weird now, given my aversion to guns as a child.

The daydreams usually took place when I was trying to fall asleep. Does that still count as a daydream? I don’t care. They began with team selections. In my head I’d see a never-ending row of everyone I knew, or at least the people I liked. There were always two teams: my team and the other team that consisted of everyone I didn’t pick for my team. I’d go down the line of potential assassins and weigh the pros and cons of having him or her on my team. Pat’s older brother was always a given. He was fast and tall and a great shot, at least in the close quarters environment of Pat’s living room, where I’d seen him perform. My dad, hmmm, probably not. His strength and protective nature were definite selling points, but I didn’t think he’d be able to swiftly and silently navigate the halls of my school where the battle royal was taking place. There was no way in hell he’d be able to perform a diving-across-the-hallway-while-firing-his-gun maneuver without getting hurt, even in my land of make believe.

Teams were picked and the fight would begin with my team and me huddled at one end of the school. I was in charge and whispered directions to them about who would be traveling together and what our methods of attack would be. “Stay inside the alcoves in the walls. Diving is the best way to avoid being hit.” I was obsessed with diving.

Oh, I guess it’s important to mention that I wasn’t in a wheelchair in these daydreams. Wheelchairs aren’t exactly stealthy, and back then I was able-bodied in all of my dreams.

The most vivid part of my fantasies started when I set off down the dark hallway toward the other team. After handing out orders to my teammates, I always took off on my own. (There’s probably a deep-seated, psychological reason for this fact.) Where the dream had previously been from third-person point of view, it now switched to first person. I became myself traveling through the building, constantly checking my paintball cartridge to make sure I had enough ammo, scanning the hallway for enemies, ducking into alcoves, diving all over the place for no reason. When I did come across a member of the other team, we inevitably entered into a dramatic standoff, both of us pressed into the safety of an alcove, peeking out every so often, firing off erratic paintballs towards the other, more diving across the hall for no reason. I always won. My team of fighters never reentered the daydream. Instead, I’d clear out the building by myself, and either fall asleep celebrating my victory or snap out of my dream to imagine the awesomeness of being able to someday dive through the hallways of my school playing paintball with my friends if my disease was ever cured. Since I wasn’t confined by my wheelchair in the dream, the possibilities for entertainment were endless.

chapter 13

young love

My first serious crush occurred in fifth grade. This was the age when most of my friends began to pair off, or at least that’s what I understood from all the rumors that floated around the cafeteria during lunchtime.
Did you hear that Joey touched Megan’s butt during gym class? Ryan went to Cassie’s house last night and her parents caught them making out! Did you see the used condom by the monkey bars? Brian claims it’s his!

Everyone starts to get a little horny in fifth-grade, and I was no exception. At this point, I still had no conception of dating and relationships. Many of my friends were girls. I often hung out with them outside of school. We played video games and walked (I rolled) to 7-11 for Slurpees. Innocent stuff. Then, around the same time all of the fifth grade boys were gathered into a room and told about erections by the gym teacher, a switch went off inside me. Suddenly the weird changes occurring in my body made sense. Morning wood was not just a random act of nature designed to make life embarrassing when my dad woke me up and helped me get dressed for the day; it was a sign that I was old enough to have a girlfriend (which, honestly, did not make the situation with my father any less embarrassing).

Upon making this realization, I simultaneously began feeling like I was a little late to the party. All of my friends either had a boyfriend or girlfriend or plenty of stories about things they had done when their parents were not around. Many of their tales were probably fabricated—looking back, I have trouble believing that any of my eleven-year-old friends had lost their virginity—but in the moment, I believed them and thus felt like I was being left behind. Girls didn’t want to come play video games and drink Slurpees anymore. After all, what would their boyfriends think? I needed a girlfriend, or I risked becoming a “loser.”

One of my closest female friends at the time, Lizz, became the target of Operation Fifth Grade Hormones. It was generally accepted among the boys that Lizz was the hottest girl in elementary school. Her boobs were winning the developmental race by a long shot, and she was athletic, a quality of high value at that age. She was sassy, but in a cute way that gave meaning to the multitudes of awkward erections experienced by the fifth grade male population. At recess one day, she kicked a friend of mine square in the balls for making fun of her. It was the best moment of his life.

Lizz and I connected in the classroom more than anywhere else. She was kind and funny always willing to help me, but in a way that just felt like we were close friends.

She came over to my house several times. She and my brother played tackle football in our front yard, then we ate some ice cream and did homework. Clearly, I had no reason to think she was into me. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

I knew from everything my friends had told me that I needed to “ask her out” if I wanted her to be my girlfriend. That scared me shitless. If you’ve ever read the poem “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T. S. Eliot, he perfectly describes the neurotic internal debate I felt while working up the nerve to ask Lizz out. If you haven’t read it, please mark your page here and go do so now. You can always come back to this, and if I’m being honest, Eliot’s poem is way better than this book. In fact, you should probably just throw this book away and go buy some of Eliot’s work. (Just kidding, don’t do that, please.)

Anyway, I’ve always been a very analytical person, to the point that it occasionally crippled me more than my disease could. If I asked Lizz to be my girlfriend, and she said yes, it would be the greatest accomplishment of my life. I would have a girlfriend. Kids in wheelchairs don’t get girlfriends very easily. This would be a big step in proving to the world that I was different. On the other hand, she could say no. Everyone knows that you can’t ever go back to being “just friends” after a failed proposal. Not to mention the overwhelming embarrassment of being denied and the implication that it meant I wasn’t good enough to have a girlfriend, which in my mind would obviously be because of my wheelchair. In a way, it felt like asking Lizz out would dictate my experience with females for the rest of my life.

I had two options. Risk failure by asking her out and maybe just maybe she would say yes, or simply not even try and avoid facing the probable reality that girls would never want to date me. After some serious mental deliberating, I decided to go for it.

I called out to her as she came down the slide the next day at recess, interrupting her game of tag. She walked over, sweating and panting, and asked what was up. Before I could answer, someone ran up behind her and slapped her on the back.

“TAG! LIZZ IS IT!” the little twerp screamed. Lizz rolled her eyes and ignored him, but I couldn’t help feeling like my proposal was already off to a terrible start.

“Hey Lizz, I know this might be weird, but would you want to go out with me? I really like you.” Boom. No beating around the bush, no small talk, just a giant question, presented with as much confidence as a fifth grade boy could have.

No hesitation on her part, “I like you a lot, too, but I just want to be friends!” she said, before smiling like an actual princess, then turning around and sprinting back to her game of tag.

My ego apparently refused to accept that answer, because instead of sulking away to cry behind the giant oak tree, I followed her.

“Lizz, wait!” I yelled, “seriously, I really like you!”

She paused her game again to give me the same answer as before. My mind didn’t understand. Boys I knew had no trouble getting girls to go out with them. In fact, many of my guy friends had been asked out by girls. There had to be a reason why she only wanted to be friends. Deep down I knew the reason, but again, my stupid fifth grade self didn’t feel like facing this reality, so I continued to follow her throughout the playground.

“Why?” I asked her when I was close enough for her to hear me. No response. I asked again, this time yelling to her as she swung across the monkey bars. Still no answer. For the rest of our twenty-minute recess period, I continued to follow her like a lunatic around the playground, accosting her whenever I got close enough.

Lizz and I never dated.

However, there was a brief period later in fifth grade when I hung out with the same girl at recess for a few days in a row. She shared her lollipop with me once and I thought things were getting pretty serious; I woke up the next morning with strep throat and that was pretty much the end of that. It wasn’t until two years later when this girl told me she had considered us to be “together” during those few days that I realized she was my first girlfriend. Romantic, I know.

Pickup Line: Hey do you want to make out with me? You do?! Great! I’m just going to need you to fill out this quick medical questionnaire. Have you experienced any coughing, wheezing, sore throat, watery eyes, headaches, stomach pains, runny nose, or fevers within the last week? I’m sorry, I just really can’t afford to get sick.

chapter 15

middle school madness

The end of fifth grade meant the end of elementary school and a transition into a much larger middle school. The middle school you attended was determined by the location of your house, which led to the reluctant severing of many friendships (except for the kids with parents who provided false addresses to send their bratty children to whichever middle school they wanted). Middle school means many different things depending where you live, but in Bethlehem and surrounding areas, it refers to grades six through eight, which meant I had to reassume my position at the bottom of the totem pole. The adults in my life teased me that middle school was a big, scary place from hell, but during my first week of sixth grade, I was alarmed to discover that they kind of weren’t teasing after all. Middle school was terrifying.

Please don’t attempt to shake my hand. I know it’s tempting; my severely atrophied arms are really sexy, but literally the only possible outcome of trying to shake my hand is an extremely awkward situation. I will chuckle and say something like, “I … uh … can’t really … uhh…” and you will realize that I can’t even extend my arm, let alone shake back, forcing you to pretend that you had meant to pat me on the head all along, like I’m a cute, little wheelchair puppy.

You will probably assume that I didn’t notice your creative, on-the-fly problem solving. After all, people in wheelchairs have no social skills. But I did notice, and now all I can think about is how ridiculous it would be if you introduced yourself to everyone by patting their heads.

In the future, please consider utilizing fist bumps or tiny kisses on the cheek to greet me. I prefer a little tongue, but I won’t be picky.

Everything was so different than what I had grown accustomed to. In middle school, a bell rang at the end of class, causing an avalanche of students in the hallway as everyone raced to their next class before the late bell rang. The days of walking in single file lines, led by a “Line Leader,” were long gone. In elementary school, when the teacher said, “marshmallows in your mouth,” everyone had to pretend their mouths were full of marshmallows and got completely silent. In middle school, No one followed the “marshmallows in your mouth” rule anymore. Let’s be honest, the hallways of East Hills Middle School were not an avalanche; they were a chaotic clusterfuck. Decency was thrown out the window and replaced with screaming, running, shoving, book bag throwing, cologne abusing, and making out against lockers. I cautiously made my way through this chaos for the first few days of classes, but eventually even I lost my humanity in this zoo. Being the nice guy just didn’t work here. Patiently waiting for people to get out of my way in the hallway became old very quickly, and I started navigating my chair through the crowd with less regard for the lives of others. Many shins were permanently damaged at the hand of my merciless driving.

Another difference in middle school was that every student was given a spiral-bound homework calendar at the beginning of the year. Whether you wrote down your assignments was completely up to you. Only a year ago, I had been required to get a parent’s signature on a weekly homework calendar every night. This new freedom, mixed with my lazy but confident personality, led me to use my homework calendar a grand total of zero times, convincing myself that I could keep all of my assignments organized in my brain. Turns out I couldn’t, which I was forced to accept when I got an unbelievably crushing B on my first report card; social studies though, so in hindsight, who cares? I didn’t do the logical thing and change my ways to become a more organized and responsible person, but rather settled into a lifelong routine of half-assing school because I didn’t feel like putting in the effort to stay organized.