I RECEIVED a most pleasant surprise recently.
A friend by the
name of John S Thomas from Johor Bahru whom I had not been in contact with
for more than 30 years, got in touch with me again on Facebook.
What was even more
sentimental about our online “reunion" for me was a black and white
photograph of myself that I had taken and sent to John via snail mail when I
was in my late teens.
I had almost quite
forgotten about it until John sent it back to me.
The picture brought
back many happy and sometimes slightly sad feelings at the same time as I
thought back about the things that happened to me in the past.
The most prominent
part about the picture was, of course, my wheelchair.
It was the first of my
three wheelchairs that I have been using in my lifetime since I became a
paraplegic at the age of 10.
A botched surgery
made me paralysed. I couldn't move around much in the house until the
wheelchair came along. It quickly became the most important thing in my
life.
I loved my
wheelchair. I thought it was the greatest invention on earth because I was
able to use it to get around the house by myself: The bedroom, kitchen, and of
course, the bathroom which I usually needed help before from others.
My wheelchair also
gave me the opportunity to explore the neighbourhood.
But not before first
arming my newfound “mechanical pal on four wheels” with some basic
essentials.
These included rear
view mirrors for bicycles to several kinds of alarm bells from the ringing type
to battery operated ones. People and cars from a distance could always tell
when I was approaching.
I even tried the
bread man’s horn but abandoned it quickly when I was mistaken for the real
thing!
It is not easy making
friends when you are in a wheelchair. So I used my special gadgets to the hilt
to try and impress all the kids in the neighbourhood my age with my super
wheelchair.
Best part of it is
that it worked like a charm.
I would wait everyday
for evening to come in order to join my friends for games like
Hide-And-Go-Seek; where I would be the one doing the finding all the time with
them hiding in drains and tunnels and then suddenly creeping up on me from
behind.
And even though I
could spot them a metre or two away in my rear view mirror, I would sometimes
pretend I didn’t and let them “win” on certain days in good sporting spirit.
I would also be
included in badminton where I would sit in one position and hit the shuttlecock
that they would serve to me.
However that all came
to nought when my friends slowly stopped playing with me and started
disappearing.
Later I found out
that their parents told them not to do so, “because they wouldn’t get enough
exercise playing with someone in a wheelchair.”
That was officially
my first lesson about discrimination and prejudice that some non disabled
people secretly had about people with disabilities in our society.
Then I turned my
attention to shortwave radio listening after I discovered an old radio in the
store room. It was my window to the world.
My first international
radio station was the Far East Broadcasting Company from Manila, in the
Philippines.
I soon got introduced
to John who taught me how to write QSL cards to world radio broadcasts. These
special postcards give valuable feedback to radio stations about their
reception conditions here in Malaysia.
Radio suddenly became
my classroom to the world. Programmes like BBC and the Voice Of America, in
particular, spoke about incredible things disabled people were achieving for
themselves with proper support in their respective countries.
One of them was blind
people going wind surfing. Imagine that!
I wrote to the
American Embassy in Kuala Lumpur enquiring about this.
They arranged a trip
for me to go to the US where I stayed for three months learning about disabled
people.
Whilst I was there I
took my first public bus with a hydraulic lift.
I also rode on a
special wheelchair water-ski hooked to a powerboat on the sea – and even
successfully rafted down a white-water river to prove that disabilities don’t bog
you down; only people’s attitudes.
Look at me now as a
city councillor and a columnist. If anyone had suggested this to me back then,
I would have laughed it off and never have believed it for a million years!
And as for my
water-sport exploits and adventures, I wished I had asked someone to take a
picture of me during that exhilarating moment.
Had I had them, I
would have loved to put them in here in this column for my old young friends to
see it – not forgetting their parents and ask them: “Is this enough exercise
for you?”
The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment