Able
In 1960, my father was working with a team to move a large piece of equipment when the load unexpectedly shifted. As he worked to steady the weight, it turned again and crushed him. While he survived, the injury left him paralyzed from the waist down, relying on a wheelchair for mobility.
When my sisters and I were small, we hardly noticed the chair. It was just a part of our reality. Sometimes, when dad would trade the wheelchair for his comfy lounger, we would “steal” the wheelchair and do laps around the house. Other kids may have been playing catch with their dad, but we were perfectly happy with wheelchair NASCAR.
As I got older, I started to have more questions about the wheelchair, and dad was open to discussing all of it. Until one day, I asked this:
“Dad, what’s it like to be disabled?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he quickly responded, looking away. Thinking his answer was a little evasive, I phrased the question a little differently:
“Seriously, what’s it like to be handicapped?”
He turned and looked me straight in the eye. “I honestly have no idea,” he stated. He then went on to explain that while he had a handicap — that is, being unable to walk — he was not handicapped. He could do everything that anyone else could do with one exception, and the wheelchair made that exception moot. He also took…