Walking Tall, But Limping Slightly
Ok so, full confession before I start, I’ve stolen the title of this post from the name of my 2011 solo stand-up show.
I always really liked the artwork, I had this vision of making a play on the evolution of man image but instead making it the evolution of disability. The team that worked on it did such a great job pulling that vision off and bringing it to life. As a leaving present from an old job, someone actually got the image blown up huge and framed for me — it’s still hung up in my home office here today, I’m looking at it as I type this post — and if you’re wondering, yes, I do still have the boxer shorts in the picture. I’m wearing those whilst I type this too.
I recently interacted with a thread on Twitter from comedian Rosie Jones. She spoke about her hesitancy in recently using a mobility aid for the first time, how great she felt using it, and described her previous reluctance to do so as ‘deep-rooted internalised ableism.’
People including myself replied to Rosie’s tweet, sharing their own stories of similar experiences. The more I read, the more they began to resonate with me as I thought back to my own relationship with using mobility aids and other items intended to help me as a teenager.
My earliest memory of this was around the time of my second year of high school. I’d been having some difficulty carrying my bag of books on my back from lesson to lesson, and my parents and physiotherapist were concerned about the longer-term effects this weight on my back could have on my posture and walking.
My dad thought he’d found a solution when he purchased for me a small bag on wheels. It wasn’t huge, the kind of thing that could easily fit in the overhead locker of an aeroplane. It was black and red, all of my bits and pieces fitted in there nicely and it was easy enough for me to pull along. We thought that solved the issue, except for the one point we overlooked, and that is that other kids can be really fucking cruel.
Having something noticeably different about you makes you an easy target for bullies or criticism. I already had the unusual walk and the leg braces, so my new fashion accessory only made the spotlight bigger. I can remember walking down corridors with my new bag to the jeers of other children shouting ‘where you off to on holiday James!?’ and ‘What time is the flight captain?’ Typing this now, I’m laughing about how ridiculous the whole thing was, but, when you’re twelve and every person you walk past makes a remark and uses something intended to benefit you as the punchline of their joke, it all gets a bit too much.
I think the bag on wheels lasted no more than 2 or 3 school days before I refused to use it anymore and went back to lugging everything on my back, hoping to just blend back in with the crowd.
For a long time, I’d always been against using any kind of visibly noticeable walking aid. The idea of having to use something to help me walk I associated with failure or admitting some sort of defeat to cerebral palsy. My hope was that without anything on show, people might hopefully just see me swaggering around and assume I’d had a few too many beers or just made a poor choice in footwear.
That was until, I took rather a bad trip to an uneven pavement a couple of years ago. Often when having a fall, I’d be able to pick myself up, check my grazes on my knees and carry on. But this time it was different.
I ended up splitting my knee open rather badly — I’ll spare you the graphic images — I attached them to an email to my boss explaining why I might be out of the office for a few days and I’m not sure he’s forgiven me yet for not pre-warning him! The short story is, despite getting it stitched up in the hospital, the wound, unfortunately, got infected and I was off work for almost 2 weeks with numerous visits to the hospital.
Whilst the time off allowed me to clear out my Netflix watchlist, it’s only now I look back and reflect on that incident, that I realise it really did have an effect on my confidence whilst outside of the safety net that is my home.
It dawned on me that for years I’d almost carried around this self-awarded ‘bullshit badge of honour’ that without any form of mobility aid, people wouldn’t immediately associate the term ‘disability’ with me. That in itself presents its own set of challenges, I can recall several occasions where people who hadn’t known me long asked me to do something that I knew would be difficult or near on impossible for me to do; things like carrying a number of items collectively somewhere or carrying cups of tea — works well if you’re okay with drinking half cups and licking up the trail of tea I’ve left behind me off the floor!
In years gone by, certainly in work situations, I’d feel very awkward and almost embarrassed to say ‘oh actually, I can’t do that’, so eager to please I would often find ways of adapting to accommodate and accomplish such tasks. These days, I gotta be honest, I’m a bit tired of that nonsense, it’s much easier to just say no!
The skin on and around my right knee cap even 2 years on from the earlier mentioned fall has still not fully healed, and it probably never will. The slightest impact to it — even on softer surfaces like carpet — has resulted in it bleeding again since the original incident. I now wear a sort of knee support come knee pad on that knee when I leave the house. Questions of ‘what have you done to your leg’ get a little boring to deal with when the answer isn’t perhaps quite as exciting as they’d hoped for when asking.
From memory, it was initially my dad’s idea to purchase the stick, which I think was met with my reaction of ‘you must be fucking joking, I’m 28, not 88!!?’ Reluctantly, I made the purchase on the thought of ‘there’s no harm in trying.’ I have to be honest, 2 years into using it fairly regularly, it does give me a lot more confidence when navigating the pavements and other outside terrains.
I was so worried about people looking at me when using the stick. The awkward stares, the glares of inquisitiveness, and general gawping that many disabled people experience day to day from random members of the public. In truth, I’ve actually found people for the most part to be far more accommodating, people often make the effort to allow me on and off trains before them and give me space to navigate, but I think part of that has more to do with me having whacked a few people in the leg with my stick accidentally if they’ve gotten too close!
Tools to make things easier are things we all encounter and use in life, both disabled and non-disabled. For example, an electric blender in the kitchen to help combine ingredients together, or a ladder, to help you put something in the attic. For me, my stick is a bit like my vacuum cleaner, it navigates its way across the ground picking up any hazards so that ultimately I don’t end up falling in shit.
