By Jim Moorhead 2005 This story is based on the experience of a boy who did not have the benefit of proper treatment after polio. GROUNDED My name is Andy Turner. I had polio at the age of seven, and it left me with almost complete paralysis of both legs. So my experience of ordinary walking - not to mention running, jumping, hopping and all the other ways children move about - was limited to about five years in early childhood. My home was in a small village in the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa, where my father was employed as a storeman at the local farmers' co-operative. I don't think polio vaccine was available when I was a child, or if it was, I obviously didn't get any. The doctor who attended me had me admitted to hospital in Port Elizabeth, 150 miles away, and I was there for a few weeks. During that time my legs were in some kind of splints, but I didn't realise until later that these were to prevent muscle contraction. I don't think anyone took the trouble to explain this to my parents either, as you will see. I was taken home, and spent another few weeks in bed, still with my legs in splints. I don't think there were any instructions about further treatment or management of my condition. Our local family doctor had at that stage moved away and his successor hadn't yet arrived, so there was quite a long period when the nearest doctor was 150 miles away at the hospital. My mother was left to cope with the situation as best she could - a child who now couldn't walk. I was having great pain in my legs as the contracting muscles pulled and stretched, and to give me relief from this my mother didn't insist that the splints should stay on. She unstrapped my legs, and the relief was wonderful; the pain stopped immediately. The splints were put away in a cupboard and forgotten. They wouldn't help me to walk, so why bother to wear them? No one had really impressed upon my parents how important it was for the splints to stay on night and day at that early stage of recovery. And so my knees began to bend as the muscles contracted, and before long they were locked at quite an angle. My parents were simple, accepting people, and they assumed this was how things would be. If they had known more about medical matters, if we hadn't lived in such a remote place, if they had been given proper advice, things might have been different. I certainly don't blame them. They did the best they knew how, and looked after me with great care and love. People generally, especially in little places like our village, knew much less about medical and health matters than they do today. I remember one day hearing a conversation between my teacher and my mother. I was some distance away and only half listening, but I knew they were talking about my future. They discussed how I might be able to get about in a wheelchair, and perhaps even be able to find a job of some sort, as long as I continued my schooling in the meanwhile. My teacher's words as they ended the conversation somehow annoyed me, though I couldn't work out why. "Poor Andrew", she sighed. A NEW SORT OF LIFE Soon there was no need for me to be kept in bed any longer, but it was a very different sort of life from the one I had enjoyed before the illness. A boy of seven, now feeling well and energetic, can't be expected to sit in one place for hours at a time. I wanted to try to do the things I used to do around the house and garden, but getting around was now a huge problem. Sometimes I was carried from place to place by my uncomplaining parents or Eric, my elder brother; but I soon discovered that I could crawl quite successfully on my hands and knees, even though my feet stuck up behind and wobbled about in the air. When my mother saw I was determined to move about like this, especially in the house and in our own garden, she made me a pair of knee-pads from a piece of old blanket, and we tied these on to give my kneecaps some protection from wear and tear on floorboards, concrete and gravel. My "illness" - the polio attack itself - had been in October, quite near the end of the school year. My time in hospital and in bed at home was mostly during the school summer vacation, so I missed very little school and I was ready to move up into Standard 2 in the ordinary way when school re-opened at the end of January. In fact I had some advantage, because while I was confined to bed I read a lot more than I would otherwise have done. My parents took out a subscription for a weekly children's magazine, I was given comics (especially the Beano, Film Fun and Dandy type from Britain), and friends and neighbours searched their shelves for suitable books for me. The pain, uncertainty and immobility of those months was in some way made more bearable by the new worlds I discovered through reading. Some of the books I read then have a very special place in my memory, all these years later. WHEELS The village school with its two teachers was only about half a mile from our house, and previously Eric (who is two years older than me) and I used to walk there and back. Now, of course, other arrangements had to be made for me. They talked about getting a wheelchair, but nothing came of that. I realise now that the cost of a proper chair must have been beyond my father's means at that time. I don't think he belonged to any medical aid scheme, and if he could have applied to the government health department for assistance, for some reason or other he didn't, and so at home I continued to be carried about, or crawl. We had no motor car, and my father used to walk to work, a distance of about a mile, and so there was no possibility of a lift to and from school for me. A few of the neighbours would probably have been willing to help, but we weren't on anyone's direct route, and in any case none of them had regular daily runs during which I could be taken to school and brought back. Then, too, my parents didn't want to impose on anyone. My father thought of buying a little donkey for me to ride, and I was quite excited at the idea. But then we realised that though I might perch on a saddle with my bent legs in improvised stirrups, I had so little control of any muscles below my hips that I would probably topple off when the animal moved at anything more than a slow walk. I suppose something could have been rigged up to strap me on to the saddle, but the matter wasn't pursued, much to my disappointment. I think my mother considered it too dangerous. A tumble from a donkey's back could have broken my arm or collar-bone, I suppose, and she probably felt she already had enough to cope with and didn't want broken bones too. Another alternative was suggested: in the garden shed was an old baby's push chair, and if the seat could be slightly enlarged and one of the sides removed, my brother could push me to school in it. But I absolutely refused to consider that. I was just not willing to be wheeled along, aged seven-and-a-half, in a baby's push chair! They said everyone at school would understand, but I was sure I'd be laughed at, and I couldn't stand the thought of that. I was almost in tears, and angrily said I would crawl to school - I was getting quite agile on my hands and knees. "Andy," they said "crawling is also a baby way of moving about, and if they're going to laugh at a push chair, they'll think crawling is funny, too". I wouldn't listen to reason, so my parents sensibly and sympathetically didn't insist on the push chair, but they wouldn't allow me to crawl half a mile to school and back, and they didn't expect my brother to carry me piggyback. It was Eric who solved the problem, by using the old push chair wheels to make a little "soap box" cart, with front wheels controlled by a steering rope. He fixed an old spade handle on to the back, so that someone could push the cart without having to bend double. In the box I sat cross-legged on a large old cushion. In fact cross-legged was the only convenient way I could sit, because by that time my knees were so bent and rigid that sitting anywhere in the "ordinary" position with my legs hanging down was not comfortable. Even if my legs wouldn't let me stand and walk, I wished at least that my knees could move easily like hinges, instead of being locked in a bent position. I was quite happy with his vehicle, because it was the kind of thing boys built and had downhill races in. So Eric pushed me to and from school in it, and didn't complain too much. The other children were quite envious of my little cart, especially as I could free-wheel downhill and steer myself with the rope. There was even a crude brake for the back wheels. While the novelty lasted my friends begged me to let them have rides. I would be left on the ground, on my cushion, while they took it in turns to race down a sloping path in the school grounds. The teachers didn't really approve of this, but the game was only forbidden after someone crashed the cart and damaged the front wheels. That day Eric did have to piggyback me home, pulling the damaged cart along behind us on its back wheels. After it was repaired there were unfortunately no more rides in it for my friends. There were a few times when having to push me home from school interfered with Eric's afternoon programme, but after a bit of complaining he would race me home in record time, and then go off to his football or cricket or whatever. At those moments I first began to feel the burden of my situation. Without help from someone I was completely immobile, except for my crawling. Some time later, a lady in the village whose late husband had been an invalid for several years, offered his old wheelchair to me as a gift. My parents would have bought it from her, but she wouldn't hear of that. It was a heavy old thing, nothing like the modern light folding kind, and it had no wheel rings for propelling yourself along. So I still had to be pushed by someone, and I hated the feeling of being trapped and beholden to other people if I wanted to go out anywhere. Around the house it was all right. I could crawl without help from anyone! Then something happened that began a change for the better in my life. NEW POSSIBILITIES I was about twelve, and had just moved into the small secondary section that had been started at our village school, when my father moved to another job in Worcester, which was quite a large town. I think one of the reasons he decided to move was so that Eric and I would be able to go to a bigger school, with a wider choice of subjects. We had just settled into our new home - the school term hadn't begun yet - when Eric and I both went down with a bad type of flu. We had high temperatures and felt terrible. My mother asked her neighbours about local doctors, and a certain Dr De Vries was recommended. He even made regular house calls, which was becoming quite rare among doctors at this time. Dr De Vries came to our house to attend to two sick boys, and prescribed something that soon had us feeling better. But when he saw the condition of my legs, and realised how little mobility I had, he discussed it with my parents. He pointed out to them that the lesions (as he called them) affecting my legs could have been avoided, and with proper treatment and management I could have been walking upright. Of course I would have needed callipers and crutches, but at least that would be better than being in a wheelchair or crawling. My mother later told me of the mixture of shock and guilt they felt when they heard this. They had been badly served by the hospital staff, who hadn't given them proper advice and guidance; but that didn't prevent them from feeling guilty that they had let me down. They didn't talk to me about this at the time, but years later my mother told me how bad they felt about what they hadn't done. I still see it as their kindness in releasing me from the agony of those splints! They didn't know they should have been "cruel to be kind", insisted on the splints remaining in place despite the pain, and prevented the lesions from happening. But that's easy to say with hindsight. THE SPECIALIST On Dr De Vries's advice I was taken to an orthopaedic specialist in Cape Town, and this was my first visit to the big city. My mother and I went by train, and because it wasn't possible to get there, see the specialist and get back to Worcester all in one day, we stayed overnight in a small private hotel in Long Street. The train arrived at Cape Town's main station with about an hour to spare before the appointment with the specialist, whose rooms were at the upper end of Adderley Street. We didn't have the old wheelchair, which my mother felt was too heavy and clumsy to be taken on the train to Cape Town. Certainly it would have been very difficult for her to have loaded and unloaded it by herself, as she was quite a small woman, and not physically strong. I suppose she could have asked porters or fellow passengers for help, but that wasn't her way. Whatever the reason, the wheelchair stayed at Worcester. As a twelve-year-old I was too heavy for her to carry, and so when we arrived in Cape Town there was nothing for it but to crawl from the train to the bus stop outside, while my mother struggled with the suitcase. When the bus came I clambered on and sat in the gangway near the door, getting in people's way, during the five-minute stage up Adderley Street. Of course I received plenty of curious and sympathetic stares from the other passengers. People in Worcester were used to seeing me around, but I must have been a strange sight to those people in Cape Town. I was wearing long trousers and a smart new pair of knee-pads. (The old ones, made of blanketing, had worn through, and a shoemaker in Worcester had made me a leather pair with soft padding inside and tough circular "soles". ) At this time I had also taken to wearing a pair of old leather gloves for crawling, so that my hands could stay clean, whatever dirty floors or muddy ground I had to cross. On my feet, which still stuck up uselessly behind me, I wore a pair of child's size six boots. They were purely for appearance; I had a thing about going out dressed for a special occasion with only socks on my feet! Anyone who looked carefully would have seen that the soles of my boots were as clean as they day they were bought, because they had never touched the ground. With all the new sights of the city around me, and Table Mountain looking so much bigger and closer than I'd expected, I tried not to worry about the stares. My mother, knowing that I was becoming more and more self-conscious and unhappy when I was "in public", had encouraged me to think "This is how I am, this is how I have to move about, and that's that. If that causes people to stare, too bad. That's their problem." I kept telling myself this, but it didn't really work. I began having a recurring dream about this time that shows that my situation must have weighed on my mind. I dreamt that I was simply walking normally along a crowded street, and the strongest impression, the thing that gave me an incredibly pleasant feeling in the dream, was that no-one was looking at me! I still have that dream to this day, at regular intervals. The consultation with the orthopaedic specialist was quite brief, and it was some time before I could really absorb what he told us. He said it would be possible to do a series of operations to straighten my legs and loosen up my knee-joints, and then, with callipers and crutches, I would be able to walk. Well, he made it clear that it wouldn't ever be proper "walking", but at least I'd be able to stand up at my proper height instead of always being in a chair or, even worse, at floor level. We returned to Worcester the next day with this exciting news. IN HOSPITAL The arrangements were made. I know my parents had to borrow some money, and a few weeks later I returned to Cape Town, alone, to be met at the station by someone in a car from the Red Cross Children's Hospital, where I would spend the next six weeks. The operations were successful, and I recovered from them without too much trouble or pain. I was pleased to find that my legs now made a long straight lump under the bedclothes, even if they were in bandages and splints again. Of course I still couldn't move them, and that wouldn't change, but the nurses promised me that once the splints were off, my knees would be flexible. I would be able to sit in a chair with my feet on the floor. Even though I had put on a brave appearance, I really felt very lonely, even afraid, at being so far from home, without my parents - after all, I was only twelve. But the nurrses and doctors were very kind, and I made some new friends among the other children in the orthopaedic ward. I soon got used to the hospital routine. There was even a teacher from the education department whose job was to see that children in the hospital for several weeks or months didn't fall behind in their school work. She taught me for two hours twice a week and gave me work to do. "We'll call it 'homework'", she said, "even though you're not at home!" My special friend was Michael, about my own age, who six months previously had lost both legs in an accident while playing on a narrow-gauge railway line on a sugar farm in Natal. He and some other boys had been pushing each other in a little empty cane-truck, which seems a harmless sort of game. But Michael missed his footing while jumping on to the moving truck, fell under the wheels, and his legs were so badly crushed that they had to be amputated - almost at the hip. The very short stumps - you couldn't see them even when he was wearing short trousers - made fitting and using artificial legs very difficult. He had been sent down from Natal to the Red Cross Children's Hospital so that the specialists could see what could be done for him. One day when I was a bit down in the dumps about my own situation, the kind, motherly ward sister told me quietly to think about Michael's problems, and be thankful. It was valuable advice. As soon as the operation scars healed I had physiotherapy, which was mostly someone picking my legs up off the bed and bending and stretching them, for twenty minutes at a time, then massaging what remained of my calf and thigh muscles. I was puzzled when they also began to make me do arm and shoulder exercises, and I asked the reason. After all, it was my legs that were the problem, not my arms! The reply was obvious, though it hadn't occurred to me. I would be so dependent on crutches that my arms had to be strong. They would soon develop strength, but at the beginning, as I first began to get mobile, the arm muscles needed special attention and preparation. Then came a visit to the orthopaedic workshop, where leg measurements and foot casts were taken for callipers and boots. I went back once more for a trial fitting, and in about a week my things were ready. In my innocence and excitement I thought I would simply be able to put them on and walk. ROMANCE AND REALITY When I was asked to write this account of my life (or part of it, at least) it was suggested that I might consider how my social and emotional life was affected, if at all, by my physical disability. I'm not a psychologist, so I won't speculate about that. All I can do is to include some experiences and memories that could be called "emotional". When I was in hospital in Cape Town, I was into the age of puberty, though at the time I had little idea of what was happening. My attitude to girls at school was changing. I found them more attractive, even exciting, but I didn't show it. Though I had some good friends among the girls in my class, I believed that none of them would really be interested in having a "boyfriend" who couldn't walk. So I had contented myself with fantasies about wonderful girls who would like to go out with me. Perhaps there might even be a girl disabled like myself, and we would fall in love with each other. In the girls' ward next door was a girl named Jaqueline who was also "post-polio", though she'd had it much more recently than me. Her smile and blond pigtails attracted me strongly. She was fairly mobile, having one full-length and one below-knee calliper. One day during a school lesson she came into our ward to ask the teacher something, and I saw that she was interested in some of the comics and magazines on my locker. I offered to lend her some, and she began to come in regularly to talk to me. This was the first time I had ever had a proper "girlfriend". It was very exciting, and even disturbing, but it ended in disappointment. Firstly I discovered that she had interests that I couldn't share; but that didn't stop her talking about them so that I couldn't get a word in. The clothes she'd be wearing when she got back home to Newlands, her dogs, her grandfather's horses on the farm near Robertson, her friends at the expensive private school she went to. I might have come to terms with all that, and let her talk on. But when she said that she had a "very special boyfriend" who had climbed Table Mountain three times with his older brother, and he was looking forward to her coming out of hospital, and his father had promised him a car when he turned 18, my spirit curled up and shrank. We continued to be friendly, but I stopped thinking of her as a "girlfriend". My romantic fantasies continued all the more strongly, ranging far and wide, soaring to great heights, while physically I remained firmly anchored to a hospital bed. This was my excited and expectant state when I was preparing to stand up and walk. On the great day I was wheeled to the orthopaedic fitting room, and there I would have my first lessons in walking with callipers and crutches. I didn't expect lessons, though. Full of confidence, I thought I would simply put on the boots and callipers, pick up the crutches and get going! It wasn't as simple as that. I was taken to a screened off area and placed in a chair. My new callipers were waiting, propped against the wall - metal rods, leather straps, soft padding where needed, and a pair of custom-made boots into which my completely floppy feet and ankles would be firmly laced and strapped. The first thing I realised was that I wouldn't be able to put it all on by myself. It had to be brought to me, and I had to be strapped in by someone else, and taught the proper sequence. Some parts were adjustable with buckles, others weren't. And the whole procedure was repeated in reverse when I had to take it all off, first for one leg and then the other. It seemed to take about a quarter of an hour, but I suppose it wasn't really that long. Those first callipers had no knee locks that could be released when you wanted to sit down. That was a refinement that only came years later, when I got my first "adult" callipers. The orthopaedic assistant was an attractive young woman named Jenny, probably no more than 19 or 20, doing her training in the orthopaedic unit. I was wearing only a hospital dressing gown and a pair of underpants, and I felt suddenly self-conscious and embarrassed when she had to get my legs into the callipers, with all the fiddling and adjusting involved. I was quite used to having nurses and doctors examining and touching my legs, but for some reason I felt this was different. Jenny was so young and pretty, and I felt all the body-consciousness of adolescence, concentrated on the one part of me that was clearly different from most other people, my legs. As the calliper slipped into place on my right leg, with the padded ring buckled snugly in position round the top of my thigh, I had the embarrassment of an erection. My cotton underpants began to bulge, but fortunately Jenny didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she pretended not to. She continued to kneel in front of my chair, and put on the left calliper. As the second one came into place, and I felt both my thighs pleasantly and firmly encircled, I experienced a sensation simultaneously new, highly alarming, and yet at the same time exquisitely enjoyable. It was a delicious pulsing between my legs that I'd never felt before. Much later, I realised that this was my first tentative orgasm. I say tentative, because it didn't last very long, and I wasn't aware of any wetness. I can only think it was a sort of first priming of the pump. By now Jenny was busy doing the final adjustments to the straps. The little disturbance had passed, but the sensation of having my legs braced was indescribably pleasant. For years they had been bent and rigid. Since the operations my knees had been loosened up, but the legs were still useless. And now came the wonderful feeling that they were stronger because they were firmly supported. I could trust the rods and straps to hold me up. I would be able to stand. Stand! I hadn't stood for nearly six years, and hardly remembered what it was like. All these exciting feelings were associated with Jenny, and I immediately fell in love with her. She taught me how to put the callipers on for myself, supervised a series of walking lessons during the next few days, and then disappeared out of my life for ever. It would be another eight years before a woman's hands would again attend to my legs and their trappings. MICHAEL The walking lessons were tiring, and I was sometimes very discouraged. It was obvious from the moment I stood in the callipers for the first time, between the parallel bars in the practice room, that I would have to learn a new technique. It took a long time, graduating from the parallel bars to the crutches, but by the time I left hospital to go home, I was quite used to crutch walking, even though I was very slow. The big day for going home came, and I said goodbye to my hospital friends, especially Michael, who was still waiting for his artificial legs, and swung himself along on his hands and his bottom to the ward door to wave a final goodbye. I ought to say a bit more about Michael, here. After several months at the Red Cross Children's Hospital, he went back home to Natal, about a thousand miles from Cape Town, and I never saw him again. However, we still write to each other twenty-five years later. From an early age he thought he would like to take an agricultural degree like his father, and, like him, become a farm manager, and perhaps one day own a farm. The loss of his legs caused a change of plan, but he still kept to the idea of agricultural studies. He had to settle for the laboratory rather than the fields, and became a research officer at the Sugar Research Station north of Durban. Having hardly any stumps at all, even the best artificial legs at the time were not much use to him, and he could never walk successfully, even with crutches, and spent most of his time in a wheelchair. He once told me in a letter that he usually wore his legs for appearance sake, because he found strangers didn't stare quite so much if they thought you actually had legs. I told him they must have given him good shapely legs that looked good in trousers. I had legs, but I'd always endured plenty of stares. ANOTHER KIND OF DISABILITY Meanwhile, I was revelling in my new mobility, even though it was limited and very laborious. Back in Worcester I asked my father to get rid of the heavy old wheelchair, which I never wanted to see again. My mother said I might still need it. She pointed out that I might not always be able wear my callipers - for example they might have to go in for repairs or adjustment - but I refused even to consider that possibility, and the wheelchair went to the auction mart. Shortly after that my parents were able to buy me a light modern one, which became my "backup" for the times I couldn't or didn't want to walk. During my years in the high school I couldn't take part in the games played there (cricket, rugby, hockey, tennis and swimming), but I became quite good at small-bore target shooting, and was encouraged to swim. I enjoyed my times in the school swimming pool, and I even occasionally swam in races. I was allowed to start in the water about two yards from the edge when the others dived in. On one memorable day I didn't come in last. There was a boy who had only just learnt to swim, and not very well, and even though I was using only my arms, I beat him. I was quite active in other things, too, such as debating and the Science Society. The latter occasionally involved meetings with pupils from other schools in the area, and this once gave me a better insight into the various dimensions of disability. In Worcester is South Africa's most famous School for the Deaf, and we once went there for a Science Society meeting and demonstration. One of our teachers, whose wife taught at the school for the deaf, prepared us for the visit by giving us a talk about profound deafness and its implications. We were told about the significant difference between those whose deafness came on after they had learnt to speak, and those born deaf. Most of us had never thought about this before, and it was quite a revelation. About twenty of us arrived at the School for the Deaf in our school bus, and were directed to the classroom where the meeting would be held. To see me swinging along on my crutches was nothing new for my own schoolmates, but I could see that some of the deaf pupils were taking more than a casual look at me, and I could even see some of them signing comments to each other about me and my condition. It was the well-meaning curiosity that many able-bodied people have about the disabled. I now accepted this as part of my life, and no longer felt any irritation or embarrassment about it. Very early in the afternoon the situation of the profoundly deaf was brought home to me in a way that no preparatory talk could do. The entire proceedings of the science meeting and demonstration had to be signed to the deaf pupils by one of their teachers, but I realised that they were missing all our little comments and remarks to each other as we watched - things that often added to and clarified what a speaker or demonstrator was saying. This was a kind of disability I could only dimly imagine. These children had huge obstacles to overcome. They could walk along the street without attracting a second glance, but they were largely shut out from what was going on among those who could hear and speak normally. Compared with that, paralysed legs were a slight inconvenience. Just as Michael's plight had put my own situation in better perspective, so did the silent world of the deaf children. GETTING A JOB When I left school I applied to one of the big banks for a job. I filled in the application form, mentioning my disability where it asked about "any physical /medical condition that may require further investigation by the employer". Having to answer that question depressed me, as I believed it would rule me out immediately. But I was pleasantly surprised. A few weeks later I was asked to go to an interview, when a personnel officer from the bank's head office would be in Worcester at the local branch. I duly went there, giving myself plenty of time to get from the bus stop to the bank, and found that the person at the reception desk was a girl who had left school the previous year. She recognised me, and behind her friendly and helpful manner I sensed a certain surprise that I, of all people, was coming for a job interview. The waiting area was on the ground floor, but the board room, where the interview would be, was upstairs. There was no lift. It would have been good to have sat quietly outside the board room until moments before the interview, and when called simply go in quickly with minimum fuss. Instead, when the call came, I had to hoist myself step by step to the upper floor, which is not easy for someone with both legs in callipers. And it's tiring, too. By the time I got to the interview room, I was aware that I had kept them waiting, and the exertion of getting up the stairs resulted in my first few answers being rather breathless. A wave of pessimism overcame me again. I could see the chance of a bank job receding into the distance. But in an odd way I think the circumstances were to my advantage. I hate to think that pity came into the picture, but I could see the two interviewers were very concerned when they realised the effort it had cost me to get upstairs. I had always imagined job interviews were conducted coldly, even ruthlessly, as the prospective employer tried make a realistic assessment. This one, however, proceeded in a very kind and friendly atmosphere, as if they were trying to make up for putting me through an obstacle course first. Three weeks later I was offered a position as a trainee teller at the large main branch in Cape Town. LIVING IN THE CITY A new, exciting and very enjoyable time began for me. Despite some misgivings on the part of my mother, I left home in high spirits, expecting great things from my first job and my independent life as an adult (of seventeen and a half!) My expectations were realised, and those first years in Cape Town were among the most enjoyable of my life. Above all, they taught me the value of good friends. The branch of the bank where I worked was in Adderley Street (the same street up which the bus had carried us from the railway station to the specialist's rooms five years earlier) and though the city's bus service was quite good (the electric trolley buses of the time were quaintly called "trackless trams") I decided to find accommodation near to my workplace, and took a room at the YMCA residential centre in Long Street. It was in a building dating from the 1890s, and although the sitting, dining and recreation rooms were on the ground floor, the bed-sitters were all upstairs, with no lift. Without my even asking if there was possibly a downstairs room, the Secretary offered me the housekeeper's room on the ground floor, as she was quite willing to move to an upstairs room. That gesture was the first example of the kindness and true friendship that marked the old Long Street YMCA, among staff and residents alike. During the first few weeks I had to concentrate hard on the work at the bank, and in the evening plough through the bundles of training material I was given, so that I could take on the full responsibilities of a teller as soon as possible. Until then, I was given a taste of the various sections and departments of a busy city bank. The most unnerving was when I sat alone at the enquiries desk, hoping I'd be able to answer all the questions that customers came up with. The only physical problem I remember at work from those days was that I couldn't carry a pile of three or four heavy ledgers from one desk to another. When they saw my difficulty, colleagues were always ready to lend a hand, but I soon found a way of managing on my own, with the help of a large sort of canvas knapsack, like a postman's delivery bag. When I first turned up with that I got a good deal of teasing. "Too proud to ask for help, eh?" "Is that your lunch bag you're using? You must eat as much as a horse." "Here comes the postman" and so on. But it was all very good-natured. From the beginning, the senior people in the branch suggested that if I wanted to make a proper career in the bank I ought to prepare myself as soon as possible for the various banking examinations which would qualify me for more senior positions. In due course I did that, and today I am a senior branch accountant, with branch manager as my next step. But in those first few years in Cape Town, I found life too enjoyable to spend a lot of time studying. ENJOYING LIFE There was just too much else to do. That may sound strange, for a country boy, new to the city, on his own, and not able to get around much. That is where my friends came in. At the YMCA I soon got in with a group of three or four young chaps of about my age or a little older, all of them, like me, working in the city - one in a rival bank, one in the accounts office of a large clothing shop, another almost finished his apprenticeship as an electrician, and one - a job we thought very exciting - was assistant projectionist at the largest cinema in town, and hoping to move into cinema management in due course. Most of us were from out of town, and wanting to taste the delights of the city, and we relied on the one Capetonian in the group to give us ideas about where to go and what to do. One of us - Alan, who was in the accounts office - had a car, an old Chevvy, very heavy on petrol, but roomy as only those old American cars used to be. With a bit of a squash we could all fit in, and when a girlfriend or two joined us, there was room for them too. There was a broad bench-type front seat, and the gearshift was on the steering column, so three (or even four) could fit in the front. It was an unspoken rule that I would have the place nearest the passenger's door in the front, as there was more room than in the back to manoeuvre my legs in and out. It was another unspoken rule that the one sitting behind me, at the left-hand back door, would take my crutches once I was sitting, and put them in the boot of the car, and it was his or her job, on disembarking, to fetch them for me. It was all done naturally and easily, without any fuss, and I accepted this little gesture readily. Soon it became so much part of the drill that I found myself forgetting to say thanks. Once my belated "thank you" got the flippant reply "Don't thank me, buy me a box of chocolates!" That was the sort of companionship I was revelling in, probably for the first time in my life. I had been accepted without question or reservation into a group of able-bodied people who included me in their activities as a matter of course. CARRIED ALONG In fact there were times when I held back, and was positively bullied into going along. Like the spur-of-the-moment outing to the public swimming pool at Sea Point. On a hot Saturday afternoon in Summer, the "Long Street Gang" (as we called ourselves) decided to pick up Sylvia and Dorothy, and go for a dip at Sea Point, but I mentally counted myself out. I could swim, of course, but the effort of getting out of my callipers and into a public pool didn't appeal to me. I didn't even have a swimming costume. But staying at home wasn't an option. It all happened so quickly and persuasively that before I knew it I was in the car, in borrowed swimming shorts, a towel round my shoulders, my callipers removed and put in the boot with the crutches, and on the way to Sea Point. If I had any doubts about how I would make it from the car to the pool, they were soon removed. With a friend at each elbow, I was virtually frog-marched, with much hilarity, through the turnstiles and into the pool area, my feet hardly touching the ground. Though I had gone along with the crazy plan, I still felt some unhappiness about exposing my thin, useless legs in public like that. However, once more having the feeling of free movement in a pool was so pleasant that that the exposure and embarrassment were worth it. It's difficult to explain to someone who has the use of their legs what a marvellous experience it is to stand with ease in chest-deep water, with no need of crutches, parallel bars or callipers, and feel on equal terms with everyone else. At the Sea Point swimming pool that day my friends had bullied me into something I would never have done on my own. Since then I have enjoyed hundreds of happy hours in swimming pools, and even, on a few occasions, in the safe and predictable surf at Muizenberg. I will always be grateful for that friendly bullying. THE JOKERS Leg-pulling and practical joking were everyday occurrences - like the time Bruce took my crutches out of the car boot, but instead of passing them to me, he did a good imitation of a disabled person making his way into the cinema queue. Once there, he did the old "I'm cured. It's a miracle!" routine, and Alan brought the crutches back to me, still sitting in the car. I was glad not to be at the scene of Bruce's over-the-top clowning, but he didn't spare me. When I finally arrived in the cinema foyer, he loudly told the people in the queue "Now folks, this one's genuine!" The frog-marching routine at the swimming pool gave them an idea, and they used it on other occasions, especially when there were longer distances to be covered and they were a bit impatient with my slow progress. One day three of us from the "Long Street Gang" with the same Sylvia and Dorothy went on a picnic to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. The place we were heading for was quite far up the hillside, and getting there involved some steep paths and flights of stone steps. They nobly kept to my pace for the first five hundred yards, but as the slope became steeper and I slowed down even further, Alan said "How about a lift?" Not quite knowing what he had in mind, I said "OK" and the next minute he and Bruce took my crutches, passed them to the girls, each grabbed me firmly under an elbow, and I covered the last slope and steps in record time, whisked along, my feet an inch off the ground, with remarks like "We can't wait all day for you!" and "Come on, faster!" The two girls, helpless with laughter, brought up the rear with my crutches and the picnic basket. We passed two middle-aged women on the path and the sight was too much for them. They gave us very disapproving looks, and I think one of them even called out "Shame on you!" to my two supporters. But then it dawned on them that they were not witnessing a persecution, but a familiar routine among friends. They had the grace to laugh, and later as they passed us picnicking, they exchanged a few pleasant words with us. UP THE MOUNTAIN One of our expeditions did cause me some embarrassment, but for a different reason. It was the embarrassment of being overwhelmed by friendship. Our little group decided that it would like to spend the day on Table Mountain, high up above the city, climbing up by one of the easy routes. I thought this would be one time when I really wouldn't be included, but they wouldn't hear of it. Despite my protests they insisted that I should go up the mountain in the cable car after they started out on their climb. I would admire the view for an hour or so at the top, by which time they would join me and we would have lunch. They arranged everything - took me to the lower cableway station, pushed aside my proffered cash and bought the ticket for me, helped me (in the usual bull-at-a-gate way) up the long flight of steps to the cable car, and all they asked was for me to carry the lunch packets in a small haversack. This sort of friendship made my early years in Cape Town some of the most enjoyable of my life. SYLVIA Five years later, when I had written my first series of banking exams and a reasonable career seemed to be ahead of me, Sylvia and I were married. We had developed a closer and closer friendship during two years, but rather platonic, and I shrank from taking it to another level. I had no way of knowing how she would feel about being married to a man with my sort of disability, and I dreaded putting her in a position where she would have to back away. Eventually I was so frustrated and desperate I took the plunge, even if it was going to cause a crisis in our friendship. We were sitting on the sofa in her flat when I and asked her to tell me frankly whether she felt my disability stood in the way (from her point of view, at least) of our being more intimate, and even considering spending the rest of our lives together. She didn't say anything, but did something totally unexpected, yet without embarrassment. She knelt on the floor in front of me, calmly pushed my baggy trouser legs as high up as she could, unbuckled my knee-pads and gently kissed me on each knee! She may have been calm, but the emotional peak I felt was almost more than I could handle. Our wedding reception was the occasion of some practical joking by the remnants of the Long Street Gang, but five years had made us all a bit more staid, and the nonsense was only a shadow of some of the things we had got up to in our bachelor days. Now, ten years later, we live in a little bungalow in Sea Point. Sylvia also works at the bank, so we go to and from work together. Sometime she drives, but would rather not, as she isn't happy using the hand controls we've had installed for me in the little Peugeot. ANOTHER LITTLE BOY I consider myself a well-integrated person, and I think I've come to terms with my obvious physical limitations. Our son, now aged eight, realises that I can't share in all his outdoor pursuits, though I'm a keen spectator whenever possible. Sometimes I've sensed his embarrassment in front of friends at having a father who moves about so clumsily and slowly, but Sylvia and I have tried to talk to him about this in a casual way, and we think he'll soon be able to accept the situation easily. We've reminded him that he has several friends whose parents are divorced or separated, and their fathers are usually not there at all. At least he has an ordinary family group. Well, more or less ordinary. I don't suppose it's very ordinary when he finds Dad, relaxing in the evening without callipers, and with the TV remote out of reach, having to crawl across the sitting room to change channels. I haven't yet told him that this was my usual way of getting about from age seven to twelve -- he probably wouldn't believe me. But thinking about it suggested the title for this account, which he'll probably read one day. |