Animal Farm
“All animals are equal, some more equal than others”
― George Owell, Animal Farm
One of the most powerful tools in an athletes tool kit is the use of visualization. Repeat the movement over and over again in one's mind. Whether you are a gymnast or springboard diver, a boxer or a hockey player, simply replay the movement you're working on over and over again. It's difficult to say why it works, but it works.
A really cool video made the rounds a few years ago on the internet. The Blue Angels were practicing their precision dance using visualization while seated at a conference table. The lead pilot was calling out timing and commands as each member of the demonstration team visualized the components of their maneuvers throughout the performance. The best professionals in the world use visualization.
To me when you visualize, you enhance your sensory perception, and you begin to turn on the subconscious activities that allow your body to process information in the background. It's that same unconscious activity that allows you to drive a car while you're not thinking about it. To me it helps you enter the zone. It's that miraculous place where your body is on autopilot. Known by a number of names, including the flow, visualization definitely helps you turn it on…maybe not completely but certainly faster.
Today while working with my OT, I began visualizing the necessary components of microwaving a can of chicken soup. Now in the final stages of rehabilitation, just prior to ringing the bell and being released from Folsom Correctional, the therapists are checking off the final elements of their rehabilitative work. They're doing the final evaluations and the final comparisons of the progress I have made since coming into the facility. They want to know if I can go home safely and functional. I have made no progress. I'm exactly the same. Kaitlin doesn't think so. I'm still going home in a wheelchair. But let's just say for the sake of argument I'm good to go.
Before I can be released into the wild, I still need to convince the therapists I can cook a can of chicken soup without burning the crap out of myself. It's a safety check. It's an interesting drill because the pieces of the puzzle that come together definitely smash in ways we don't consider since we are not accustomed to being in a wheelchair. For example, when your two hands are holding a hot bowl of chicken soup in the air you are no longer able to wheel your chair over to the counter to set it down. It's not intuitive. Simple ordinary actions we take for granted will reach a dead end. You better be able to set down the bowl of chicken soup before you're trapped with it. Not wanting to get caught in that trap I was using visualization. My therapist was not amused when I suggested I really only need to visualize ordering DoorDash.
Visualization is a valid tool. I was surprised at how many dead ends I would reach. This is very enlightening as I begin to enter the world of the disabled. Over the past week I've headed oudide to the hospital pavilion with friends to get out of the building. This is literally a rehabilitation hospital where they train hundreds of disabled patients a year. A simple sidewalk roll out to the recreational pavilion, a relatively flat surface, feels like I'm going straight uphill. This should be easy. It is not. I'm not feeling sorry for myself…I don't consider my situation permanent. It's so eye opening however to enter the world of the disabled. Don't walk a mile in the shoes of the disabled. Roll a wheelchair 100 ft in their backyard. Cracks in the asphalt become huge crevasses in a mountain glacier. Bits of gravel in the road are mega boulders that cannot be scaled by unforgiving wheelchair tires. Vast distances must be traveled with arm power alone. And then you must carry all your shit with you. To me this is the most annoying part. Each wheelchair at the institute is thoughtfully equipped with a cloth bag for caring items. This bag hangs uniformly behind each of the seats just beneath the handles. The therapist will drop my crap into this bag. My cell phone, wallet, book I'm reading, can of Diet Coke, and anything else I want to carry with me.
As it turns out, a bag hanging from the seat behind me is no longer useful as I don't have access to it. It's behind me and out of reach. To get to that bag I either have to climb out of the wheelchair and walk around…which I am incapable of doing…or perform some sort of torso contortion in order to reach around to retrieve things from the bag. I've been doing a combination of twisting and yanking on the bag to bring it around to the side of the chair.
These are not clean movements. It's not a ballet. It's kind of a violent flurry of activity, a disruption in the space-time continuum, just to reach back for a Diet Coke. It pisses me off. If someone is with me they can easily hand me that diet Coke. But I really feel like a loser asking a friend for such a simple favor. This is truly insidious shit. I hate that any disabled person has to suffer these stupid indignities for the simplest of things.
Making chicken soup then becomes a liberating activity. If you can cook for yourself you can take care of yourself. More or less. I feel bad today because I keep joking with my OT about ordering DoorDash. I'm not going to need to microwave the chicken soup. I’m just going to order DoorDash and pick up my food on the front porch. She continues to not be amused. While I continue to think I'm the next Seinfeld. I'm also a dick.
I don't think I've mastered the kitchen to any degree of certainty. I think I mastered the bathroom but we've spent the most time there. Strangely this is reminiscent of literally going through these steps in the early days of military school. Shit, shower, and shave. I've always preferred to shit, shave, and then shower…I don't like soap on my face. But with a person who is handicapped, none of these things are certain. The point in military school was to do them fast and get out the door, ready for inspection. If you're disabled you just want to get them done.
Whereas I'm not a fan of hazing in military schools, the intentional extremes of hazing cannot be underplayed while trying to teach cadets the importance of certain behavior under stress. The big problem with hazing at colleges across the country, whether it be within the traditional halls of a legacy military school, or the dank basement of a frat house, there is no standard for control. The hazing itself has no discipline behind it. And typically it is applied by the most sadistic student who was hazed sadistically by the most sadistic upperclassman when they went through the line. It's a vicious cycle. It gets out of control. Kids get hurt. I digress.
All this to point out that a simple task under duress becomes difficult. My entire freshman class would get 86 seconds to complete the showering activity. One bar soap, one washcloth, one shower head, 25 naked freshmen. Go.
The main point here was working together in unity, not so much accomplishing the physical act of showering. Don’t get mad at each other. Get through the drill. I still remember some of my classmates actually thinking they were taking a shower. Lathering up. Morons. Selfish acts could be identified pretty quickly in this environment. They didn't bode well for their future. I did not take a shower, I didn't even try. Now only 24 freshmen had to get through the ridiculous act in 86 seconds.
One huge hazing event that was hosted at my University required our units to go into wooded areas to cut down trees. It wasn't arbitrary as typically the trees we would chop down were in the path of a strip mining operation. Also, we did all the tree removal by hand. Seniors with wheeled axes and actually chop down the trees. Juniors were allowed to use axes to trim the branches off the timber. Freshman carried the logs out of the forest…as a team. Twenty-five freshmen to a log, split on both sides, hosting it up onto their shoulders. Then we would walk it out of the woods. The sophomore's job was to organize the lift and to haze the freshman during this entire activity. This tradition had been going on at my school for decades.
This was a highly organized event and highly controlled by upperclassmen with experience after multiple years going into the woods and being trained by the upperclassmen ahead of them. Safety was actually of very high importance. The tradition was safety. All the good elements of leadership emerged from students in this environment. Year after year it was a one of a kind leadership enclave and having been there personally for multiple years, I would say there's nothing like it at any military school in the world. Some of you may recognize the event that I'm describing. Regardless for a deep look at hazing in our military schools and academies read Pat Conroy's “The Lords of Discipline" when you have a chance. It will make you nauseous and I'm glad we have advanced out of some of the way it used to be.
If you're disabled you're not participating in this event. Driving hours to get to the location. Hiking into the area that's being cleared. Lifting logs onto your shoulders. Walking out. My God… I didn't even include this activity for its potential to add to my early back abuse. So here we are.
Regardless of the adequacy of my rehabilitation to address the actual underlying problem, I have now walked 3 weeks in the shoes of the disabled. It's not a good look. For me my main focus won't be making chicken soup at home, it will be how to get to work efficiently, and get some productive hours doing the job that I love. I'm assuming the rest will fall into place.
My plan is to work on some of this over the weekend…actually go to the office when nobody is there and work through all the drills. That should also reduce my own self-consciousness issues surrounding bringing my wheelchair to work. Believe me I'd rather bring a therapy dog.
As I contemplate this medical setback, which for me is silly by comparison to those with true disability, our great country which has been a beacon on the hill for all comers, for those who could walk into the woods with an ax, and even those who could not. Opportunity abounds. Yet in this context George Orwell, still sounds two alarms every slide down two sides of the mountain. In Orwell’s, 1984, there can be no doubt, big brother is coming for us. Not from a slide in a authoritarian government specifically, but more from the ubiquitous sensor technology that surrounds us and tracks are every move. It's not tracking our thoughts yet…yet…yet…yet…
1984 foreshadows the future. Animal Farm, was a look back on how governments could slide down the other side of the mountain into not just a social state, but straight into communism.
Look no further than Orwell's barnyard billboard, “All animals are equal, some work equal than others."
This is probably why I prefer the company of dogs over people. Dogs don't see color disability opportunity race creed religious affiliation, financial status, or hygienic practices. In fact they probably prefer the lesser hygienic practices. All dogs not only go to heaven, they're all angels, More importantly, they are all equal. They're not maneuvering to beat one another out for a higher percentage. (Ripley, Movie Aliens)
Note to self: Business idea, start selling t-shirts with the phrase, “All dogs are equal…”
Three legged dogs do not know they're three legged dogs. It's simply doesn't compute for them. We've struggled to create a society where we too could be absent from the stigmas of inequality.
While trying our best, the single parking space out in front of the lumber yard reserved for some lucky veteran, who most likely doesn't need it, stands in stark contrast to the 20 blue and white spaces reserved for customers coming to the lumber yard in their wheelchair, which are always empty.
As I begin this new, hopefully short, epoch of my life, living in the land of milk and honey as someone with a disability, I'm going to be hyper focused on a lot of the issues I'm describing.
How did we fuck this up?
How do we do better?
What is the airspeed velocity of the laden swallow?
Even if I don't get to the point where I'm answering life's big questions as well as George Orwell has asked them, I do hope I'm asking the right questions about health care.