Living on Borrowed Time

I know that I’m living on borrowed time. And I have my mother to thank for that . Because when I was but a wee criplet, my mother took me to see a lot of doctors That’s what the parents of criplets were told that they were supposed to do about us back then by the people who were considered to be the experts. They were other doctors and therapists and people who worked for behemoth charities for criplets and such. And they were all verts (which is what I call people who aren’t crippled, because it’s short for vertical). At first I wondered if these experts thought that if they sent criplets like me to enough doctors, maybe sooner or later we would come across one who had a magic potion or something that would cure us. But I came to think that they really didn’t know what the hell to do about a criplet like me and so when they told our parents that they should take us to see a lot of doctors, they were probably punting. I think that my mother never felt quite comfortable following through with all of the surgeries and braces all of the things that the doctors told her I had to get. Because she usually left the decision about whether or not to follow the advice of the doctors up to me and I almost always said no. I guess I was right about that, considering that I will be 70 and none of those doctors would’ve predicted that I would still be around, even if I did everything they said. But I really felt like I am living on borrowed time when I watched a documentary about cripples. There was a Canadian cripple in it and judging by how his body looked, l figured he was the same genre of cripple that I am . He also relies on a crew of people to come into his home to help him do all of the things he needs help doing, like getting out of bed and getting dressed. But he was having a lot more trouble managing and maintaining his crew than I do. The Canadian cripple said that his caregiver was his mother, until she recently died. I remembered when I was a teenager and my mother said to me, “ I love you but when you’re 18, please get out of my house.” So when I went off to college a few years later, far away from home, i hired my first crew member and I’ve had to hire about a hundred more since then. And by the time my mom died about 20 years later, I had long since fulfilled her dream and gotten out of her house. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH-nvFX30Mk2fJx9uI