Be Careful What You Wish For

That Crazy Little Thing Called Hugs

Maybe I'm getting to be a softie, but lately I wish I was like everybody else. Not about the walking thing - there's plenty of other people with disabilities too - but about something simpler and more basic.

I'm not a touchy-feely guy. I wasn't brought up that way. My family were not big huggers. In our working-class neighborhood I don't think most families were. Direct eye contact and a firm handshake was how you got around.

Times have changed. Guys hug guys, everybody hugs everybody. I think it's nice, but it has nothing to do with me, just like smart phones have nothing to do with me. Why? Because right before they both came in, hugs and smart phones, I done gone and got quadriplegic.

It's been years since smart phones became ubiquitous and indispensable but they're still as mysterious to me as Mr. Spock's tricorder. With hugs, I sort of tilt my head and study the way it's done, the same way I do with good dancing. (Raising hand. Terrible dancer. Still.) All the pieces seem to fold and fit together, like so. OK. Now I've got that stored away.

Your human rituals are most curious, Captain.

There are an intrepid few who try to hug me. These are sweet people, because it's hard to do. In my wheelchair I'm surrounded by a hive of switches and wires everywhere, and people don't know if they'll be hitting an ejection switch or messing me up positionwise or even hurting me. For the record, they probably won't do any of these, but what we're left with is a pantomime of awkwardness.

I give them so much credit though because at this point I go around like an iRobot. Everybody loves an iRobot. They clean up after you. They beep and squawk like R2-D2. Your cat can ride around on it. They bounce around the room like busy beavers, filling gaps in conversation. They can wear Groucho glasses like ours does. He's named Bob Roomba, after our friend, entertainer Bob Rumba, who also wears Groucho-type glasses. Me, I drive my wheelchair with a head array: My head presses on sensors in my headrest. People stare and wonder how's it moving - like an iRobot. I too run into walls. I too jerk back and forth like an iRobot, unless my headrest is in the perfect position. People stare at us in wonder, the iRobot and me, and stay the hell out of our way. Everybody loves an iRobot, but you don't hug one.

What the brave huggers are trying to do is puncture the force field around my wheelchair. There's a personal zone we all inhabit, and you just don't go traipsing into someone else's zone. I've got a big wheelchair, and it's got a big zone. My buffer is pretty large, I think it's the front-to-back length times the size of my large treaded tires raised to the power of the number of muted expletives overheard while wrangling the machine to go the way I want. I don't blame you people for keeping away. If I were in the same room with me, I'd hop on a piece of furniture.

Plus, truth be told, I was an awkward person even before the spinal column went wacko. Do you know that guy you come across on the sidewalk every five years or so who, when you go right he goes right, and when you go left he goes left, back and forth, back and forth? That was me.

Bob Roomba sees you.

In my buffer zone I observe you people with the hugs, and realize what related things I'm missing. Like goofing around with kids. Kids are the best. I get along better with them than anyone else. Kids like close contact play: chasing, hide and seek, making haunted houses, even reading to them you have to be right there with them. I do my best with what I've got, with jokes, noises, faces, but those are mind tricks and they see through those quickly. You don't form lasting bonds with mind tricks.
So for once, I wish to be like everybody else. If only for a day, a free trial.

There's a joke about a retired couple walking the beach in the morning and they find a lantern in the surf. When the husband picks it up, a genie pops out and says, "I'll give you one wish." Then the wife is horrified when she hears her husband say, "I want a wife who's 40 years younger than me." And presto, he turns 100.

Unfortunately, presto, now I am like everybody else. Nobody is hugging. And that's not the way I wanted this to go.

You can stay in the no-hug zone until the coast is clear but then I want you people out. Looks like you've got something good to look forward to.