sweet memories
2003-09-09 - 11:19 p.m.

Gay Terri came to flush my port and take blood. My g-tube was bleeding a little the other day so I asked him to look at it. I also told him not to pull on it or I’ll punch him. Then later he said I should smoke pot to increase my appetite. Then he laughed like a queer.

I’m sorry, that was rude.

I’ve inherited a few things from my dad. As far as looks go, I have his blue eyes, triangle nose and now his brown curly hair. As far as internally, he gave me his sense of humor and love/appreciation for art and music. The only one of these traits that I would’ve rather not obtained, would have to be the nose but I like to think the eyes and humor make up for it.

My sense of humor didn’t become as serious [play on words?] to me until 9th grade when my disability first started to become noticeable to the “naked eye”. I, like many have before me, used humor to cover up my insecurities. I remember the first time I talked back to a teacher was 9th grade history class. I didn’t originally do it for a laugh, it just sort of came out, but when my friends couldn’t stop laughing it took on a whole new appeal. If I could make them laugh with things like that they wouldn’t be laughing at me, right?

Its awful what fear and denial does to a person.

I remember the last time I ran. Where my feet physically left the ground and returned a step ahead of where it last was, over and over and over. I remember being almost surprised that I could still run, but I didn’t question it. I just ran.

I remember times where I fell unexpectedly and my friends laughed at me but they didn’t know they shouldn’t laugh. They eventually helped me up once they realized I needed help but they were still laughing. I was in denial and kept everything to myself, only letting specific people know as much as they needed to to be able to help me physically. It wasn’t until 11th grade that I didn’t ignore the question altogether.

One day in 10th grade I was waiting after school with friends when Jerry (who at the time wasn’t really a nice guy) started pulling on my backpack asking me to “wrestle”. [He wasn’t intentionally being a jerk, he was just annoying and supposedly had a crush on me] Luckily I was close to a pole so I grabbed onto that and just tried to ignore him, but when he wouldn’t stop our friend John told him to stop because I had back problems. Jerry asked if it was true and I said no. And it wasn’t true, the problem wasn’t with my back but John stepped out and stood up for me and I just kind of shoved it back in his face.

I think talking to Sera made me start thinking a lot about junior high and high school again. I hated the majority of those days but that mostly had to do with the denial I spoke of earlier and my disdain of thoughtless people (which is quite large in high schools).

But there were some good memories in there too. Like graduation day. Sera surprised me in the line and wanted to push my wheelchair across the stage. We had grown apart and back close together a few times throughout high school, and her doing that just really touched me. She was there for me and wanted to be there for me and it was great. Since my last name begins with Zw and I was the last out of the 540 some odd students to get my diploma, she couldn’t take me back to my seat because she would’ve missed the hat toss. Some Junior holding a leadership position pushed me back as Sera ran past me in her bare feet, holding her cap onto her extremely thick, blonde, curly hair. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of our van on the way home. With the window down, my hand riding on the waves of the wind I replayed the scene in my head and it kept making me smile. That day so made up for the times when I felt she didn’t care. She cared, she just didn’t know how to show she cared, but she cared. That one little push across the stage told me so.