So What is Handicapped?

If you would ask me if I was handicapped, I probably would say that I am not.  I came down with polio as a four year old.  I do remember being able to walk without crutches or a brace, but now being in a power chair is my reality.  My parents did an amazing job of not spoiling me.  I'd sure that it would have been much easier to pick me up when I fell rather than watch me try to figure out how to get up on my own.

My brother was a baby when I contracted polio. As I was learning to walk again, he was learning to walk on his own.  When I would fall down he would come over a let me lean on him in order to help me up.  We had a symbiotic relationship, I would translate what he was trying to say.  Unfortunately this was not as good for him.  He started talking in sentences, and I was the only one who could understand him.  My parents made me stop.

Walking with crutches seemed like an adventure, especially when I discovered that with crutches I could swing my legs and jump way far off the curbs.  Off course this was not the proper way to use crutches, but it was fun.  I don't think that I ever really learned " the proper way to walk".  I walked with crutches in my own way for a very long time.  I carried my book bag to school sometimes filled with books.  Eventually I walked across campus at Old Dominion  College with books etc.  I lived my life like any other child, teen, young adult with no excuses.

I had several operations to keep by body straight.  I have never thought of myself as handicap.  I remember being offended when someone referred to me as paralyzed.  I never thought of myself that way.
I think this was probably easy for me to feel this way, because I was so young.  Having a handicap happen to you as an older person must be more difficult to accept, to a child life is an adventure.

Sometimes I think now what my life would have been like if I had not had polio.  I'm afraid that I would not have met my husband. I  would not have had the same children.  I might not have had the insight that I like to think that I have on life, and that I would not have done as much with my life or my art. Sometimes adversities that happen in life are a blessing.  I think that I am somewhat fatalistic.  I feel that there was a plan for my life that I need to fulfill.  I have been thrust into the public, not nationally but locally.  I have run businesses with the help of first my husband and then my sons.  Years ago in 1980 I was awarded handicap Professional woman of the year by the Pilots Club in Williamsburg, Virginia.  I feel that people who see me realize that people, who have handicaps are just like them.  Needless to say that I have never dwell on being handicapped.  It's just the way my life is and I have always tried to live life to the fullest.