This a semi auto biographical account of a lifelong fascination with leg braces or, as we in the UK call them, calipers. The majority of the text is as it happened and the accounts are as accurate as I can make them after almost 45 years.

Part 1

I am sixty years old now so grew up in the era of polio I suppose the one most common disease one could contract that would render the patient vulnerable to having to use a brace or braces. As with a lot of people of my age group we grew up in a time when it was more likely

The point I am making is that from an early age we were used to seeing people wearing braces and it should really have had no effect on me, but they did, the braces fascinated me and I would never miss an oppurtunity to get a good look at any braced person I could. I well remember a girl in the next street who had contracted polio , she was about 5 or 6 years older than me and wore a single Kafo and used a single crutch she was very pretty and I longed to get to know her but when you are 11 or 12 and the girl by this time must have been 16 or 17 there isn't a lot you have in common but for years I had this enormous crush on this girl, totally laughable now, but very serious when you were 11!

The first person I ever really got to know who wore braces was a boy called Barry who joined our form when I was in my second last year at Grammar School so I would have been 15 at the time Barry joined our form after the Christmas break having been transferred to our school when his parents moved to our town where his mother had been appointed as Matron at a private nursing home. His father was a doctor and they lived in quite a large house and appeared quite affluent, I learned all this later because when Barry walked or maybe I should say crutched into the class room on that day in January I just couldn't take my eyes of him.

I should maybe mention at this point that Barry was of mixed race , his father came from Ceylon but had trained and qualified in U.K. met Barry's mother, married her and practiced as G.P. ever since, but all that is unimportant.

In those days it was most unusual for boys to wear long trousers until their final sixth form year and to the best of my recollection nobody in our class wore them, they were expensive and this was 1957/58 and things were still tight after the war so short grey flannels were the order of the day for fifth formers. I digress, on that first day in school Barry walked in in twin bilateral Kafo's and using wooden underarm crutches, I never remember forearm crutches in those days, they appear to be a more modern form of aid, our form master , a lovely man, gently introduced him and told us that Barry hadn't been very well but was getting better but we had to be sure not to be to rough with him and to please be patient if it took him a little longer to move about than the rest of us, it was at this time Barry spoke, he just looked up and said" thank you Sir for that but I'm sure I'll be O.K "   as he said it he smiled and I can honestly say it was one of the sweetest and most genuine smiles I had ever beheld, then came the problem of finding Barry a desk and as luck would have it the desk next to me was vacant at the back of the class , I put up my hand and offered to move up so Barry could have the aisle desk so nobody would trip over his crutches and he could slide in after unlocking his knee locks, this was soon agreed on and Barry came and sat down next to me.

I will skip the next few weeks suffice to say Barry very soon became my pal and we were virtually inseperable, breaktimes, going home at weekends and even when a bully tried to get clever two or three of us sorted him out , everybody liked him and he liked everyone within a few weeks I would say he was one of the most popular guys in the school.

Barry's polio had affected his left leg much worse than his right and the Kafo he wore on it was very heavy duty, it had a thigh cuff with six buckles that reached almost to his knee pad and a calf cuff with three buckles and a very slight lift in his boot, his right was much less impressive quite light in comparison, he used wooden underarm crutches   and used alternatively swing through or single gait in just about equal proportions in the 2 yrs I knew him I don't think I ever heard him complain once although his mother told me that just because he had no use in his legs didn't stop him having pain and he would occasionaly miss the odd day obviously when experiencing a bad day or two.

Barry and I had got into the habit of going to each other's houses at weekends, he was an only child and I had two brothers who got on really well with him, ours was a mad house and Barry's a haven of peace where we could do our homework so it became more likely that I would stay over and Barry's parents were quite happy as they both led busy lives and I think had felt guilty about leaving him on his own so much. They had are large house and I had a room I used and we had the dining room to study in so it was an ideal siuation

We had known each other about three or four months when a weekend occurred that was to have a profound effect on my life. Barry's Mum and Dad were to go away for some medical conference and asked me if I would stay over they would leave plenty of food or we could have meals sent in from a local restaurant, I told you they were well off. Well I agreed and on the Friday after school went home with Barry, as Barry found stairs really hard work he had a room on the ground floor made into a sort of bedsitter it was a large room with a desk and all his books and things but also a small room next door with a single bed and an en suite bathroom between the two, which I was told was for me, Barry had a double next door I was also surprised to see a T.V. and record player in the room, this was 1958 and a T.V in a teenagers room was a decided luxury I was also surprised to see a wheelchair next to the bed and commented on it and was told that though he would never be seen in public in it at home he discarded his braces and rarely used anything else.

Although I had been to Barry's house on dozens of occasions this was the first time I had ever been in this his private sanctum it's almost like he was saying" I trust you" at his point Barry became serious and told me that as I was going to sleep in the dressing room I would be next door and would naturally see him at times struggling with his disability, if he wanted help he would ask for, it but otherwise he could manage.

We had some food and decided T.V. was favourite and settled down for the night but first Barry removed his braces after first placing the wheelchair within arms reach," in case I need the bathroom," he commented," you've no idea how much I love taking them off," he said, I don't suppose the idea had ever occurred to me before but I suddenly found myself asking if it would be all right to try them on just to try and see what it was like, at first Barry looked a bit confused then he started to laugh," if you want to wear braces go ahead, be my guest but not those the right one is much too built up but there are another two pairs in the cupboard" I went to the cupboard and sure enough two more pairs Barry had used earlier before his right leg had got so bad and atrophied also about ten pairs of shoes all with caliper tubes, " Go on help yourself" said Barry " you'll find some crutches in there as well" I carried the braces to a chair and eventually buckled them on, short trouseres remember no problem,I eventually stood up and as I did I heard the knee locks drop and click I attempted to move and nearly fell, tried again and managed a few steps, got to the door Barry said " Go on you're doing great " so with difficulty I   opened the door and took my first real steps as a brace pretender. Barry followed me in his chair as I did a circuit of the ground floor eventually coming back to his room I just collapsed and Barry roared with laughter,"not as easy as it looks is it? " he said "do you want to take them off,"no way, I love them " I said "well please yourself" said Barry and went back to watching T.V. as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have your best friend sitting next to you wearing your braces.

I wore those braces for the rest of the evening and when it came for bed I asked Barry if there was anything he wanted, I was astonished at his reply,we were still sitting on this big settee me with braced legs and Barry just leant acrooss and sort of brushed my ear with his lips and whispered " a kiss Goodnight would be lovely". Now at this time I had no knowledge of homosexual activity, I believe it may still have been illegal but I can remember as clear as day thinking " Why Not" and I rather clumsily leant back to kiss Barry on the cheek and with a twist of his head he had put his mouth where his cheek had been. At this point I should have felt anything other than the sheer pleasure that sort of rolled over me and in that split second I knew I was not the same as other boys.

I hadn't a clue how to kiss I had sort of fumbled about with one or two girls but it was very soon obvious to me that Barry was no novice, I don't intend to go into details as this is not meant to titilate merely to inform but suffice to say that I did not sleep alone that night and very soon   after that night Barry and I consummated our relationship. Our friendship carried on for about another two years until Barry went to University and I went about my life much sadder but richer from the experience.

During our time together we contrived for me to have many outings as a braced pretender Barry actively encouraged it and we went to elaborate lengths to get to places where we wouldn't be seen,to all intents and purposes two young kids both wearing calipers, both likely polio sufferers, people never took a blind bit of notice.

I never heard from Barry after he left to go to Uni we promised to write every day but you are young and soon make new friends but on the off chance he ever visits this site he will recognise himself, Barry was not his real name.

Part 2

We finished the last part by me revealing that Barry released the latent homosexual feeling that I had often struggled to come to terms with. I now know , forty odd years down the line that in fact I am bi sexual but back then I was prepared to believe I was gay.

The feelings of guilt I had expected never materialised and the next morning although a little uneasy as to how we would react to each other was no problem especially when as I prepared to dress Barry reminded me to put on my braces an order I was only too happy to obey.

I spent the entire weekend in braces sometimes I used crutches but I soon realised that by using furnture I could negotiate the house without them , I fell on numerous occasions causing great amusement to my host during the entire weekend Barry never put his braces on he used his wheelchair excluseively and explained it was so much more convenient but he was positive he would never use it out of his home environment as he refused to be regarded as disabled.

As the weekend progressed we were busy dreaming up ways whereby I could continue to wear my braces, we had to plan carefully and only go to places where there was little or no chance of me being spotted and we chose various locations over the ensuing months, sometimes a seaside resort not too far away or another town, it meant our pocket money had to be eked out but as I had both a paper round and a milk round and my pocket money and Barry got a generous allowance we managed. We worked out a way of me getting the braces to the venue we usually started off from either the bus station or the railway station and I simply folded the braces and disassembled the crutches and put them in a haversack in which we had our sandwiches for the day and then I went into the gents where I put them on and put the crutches together and there we were two kids, both with braces obviously good pals and obviously polio victims. I learned to walk really convincingly in my braces and always refused politely when people offered to help, which they often did, I just said no thanks I can manage.

We did have one day where Barry used his wheelchair and halfway through the day I transferred to it , it was quite an experience but very tiring and we never did it again. These events all happened in the very late fifties when the world was a very different place but our little deception hurt nobody, if anyone should have been offended it should have been Barry and he was in fact the instigator.

Sadly all good things come to an end , Barry, a brilliant scholar ended up with a hat full of A levels and went to Oxford we promised to keep in touch and did for a while but these things have a habit of burning themselves out.

The one thing that didn't burn out was my interest in braces that is as strong now as it was all those years ago I only have to close my eyes and I can imagine the feel of the leather around my legs and the utter unforgiving rigidity of the steel, I can still hear the click as drop locks slid into place and the unavoidable creak of the leather and the squeaking of the moving metal parts.

I have other disabled interests but my overwhelming desire is to obtain for myself a set of braces to be able to in some way rekindle those happy memories.

I have deliberately kept this account anonymous but should anyone have any comments the site owner knows my identity, he is the soul of discretion, and will pass any messages on to me.
 

Conclusions

So concludes my story 99% true and factual just the names have been changed to protect the innocent as they say. This has taken me a long time to write so I hope someone finds it of interest. My fascination with braces continues, until I bought my first computer I honestly believed I was the only person on the entire planet that felt this way I was ashamed, but not now after all if a genuine polio sufferer found nothing wrong and in fact encouraged me who are others to judge.