lack of any people in his room scared me the most. Later that day, I asked my nurse to take some of my balloons and give them to the boy without any family.
On the day I was allowed to leave the hospital, I went outside and drove to where my van was parked. When the ramp was unfolded I began to realize something was not right. I drove up the ramp and stopped just before entering the van; my head was too high for me to get in without hitting it on the ceiling. By straightening my spine, the doctors had stretched out my body a solid five inches. I had to ride the entire hour home with my head tipped to the side, which felt just spectacular on my still very sore back.
Elementary school proceeded normally after my spinal fusion. I was assigned a full-time aide starting in second grade. She was a motherly figure who sat next to me in class and provided physical assistance whenever I needed it. After two years of maturation, I began to realize the negative impact she was having on my social life. My peers didn’t want to hang out with Shane and his aide; adults were dumb and they yelled at us for cursing.
Today, the metal rod is completely surrounded by my spine, and I only have moderate scoliosis, which is why I look like I’m leaning over in my pictures. (It was impossible to make it completely straight because of how bad it was before.) I have only had pneumonia a handful of times since the surgery, and I am still alive and kicking, so I will mark it as a win for me. Also, I have a super-cool scar that runs the entire length of my back.
Around fourth grade I made my first best friend at school. His name was Eddie, and he quickly made a distinction that many other kids were unable to make; I was separate from my wheelchair and all of its implications. Eddie valued my sense of humor and appreciated that I had to do things a little differently, probably because Eddie was a little different himself.
Eddie was a skateboarder. At a time when other kids were joining baseball and football teams, Eddie spent his time honing his skills on his custom-made Element skateboard. I became obsessively hooked. Skateboarding promoted an alternative, anti-establishment lifestyle. Skaters wore different clothing, thought differently, and most of all, didn’t care if the rest of the world thought they were odd. That’s exactly what they wanted.
First, I got rid of my aide. The skater mindset taught me that I didn’t need the help of adults; I was supposed to resent it. Eddie sat next to me in every class, so I convinced my parents that he could help me just as well as the aide. Although my motives for favoring the assistance of a close friend were not exactly angelic, it was the beginning of an important and healthy trend in my life; making friendships based on the mutual understanding that I needed physical help and would rely on them for it from time to time.
I also grew my hair out, a staple of the skater lifestyle, and begged my parents to buy my clothes from only the local skate shop. The fact that I couldn’t walk never felt like a reason why I couldn’t be a skateboarder. When questioned about my style, usually by adults, I simply responded, “If I could walk, I would skateboard. Besides that, I’m a skateboarder in every other way.”
I held onto the skater identity for an embarrassingly long time, well past seventh grade.
The worst part is that I made Mom spend at least fifteen minutes making it look “perfect” every morning.
chapter 10
a halloween debacle
When I was ten years old, probably in second or third grade, for whatever odd reason, my elementary school was asked to walk in the Bethlehem Halloween parade. I don’t really understand why we participated, because it’s not like we had a marching band or anything that made us special. Our teacher just told us that we should all dress up as what we wanted to be when we grow up and arrive at the beginning of the parade with our parents on Saturday