Born to be Disabled, Perfectly Suited for Paralysis

I am perfectly suited for paralysis. At least that’s what I thought when I broke my back at 20, within three months of 21. Other than postponing the traditional trip to the topless bar and birthday lap dance, the birthday milestone turned out fine. I had a comfortable bed, a bevy of nurses, and a steady flow of painkillers.

One reason why disability suits me, I’m lazy. When I woke up in ICU three days after the crash and someone – I couldn’t tell ya who – told me for the five-hundredth time what had happened, one of my first thoughts brought me great joy: I would never again have to work a manual labor job. The summer before I had hauled concrete chunks for minimum wage during a warehouse revamping. Because I didn’t own my own hardhat, the company made me wear a pink one. I guess they thought no one would steal a pink one. My head itched for a month after I quit that job the next week.

And there’s another reason why I was born to be disabled. I am one ingenious son-of-a-bitch. Mother is the necessity of invention, or something like that, but I’ve found more uses for empty cups than a man can count underwater wearing a blindfold.

Really, the ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with the laziness. You see, I wear a leg bag, and it only holds so much of the stinky stuff. Yeah, yeah, I know. If it’s stinky, go see a doctor. Mind your own business. I got it under control.

Anyway, I really don’t want to wake up at 3 in the morning after a night of whiskey and dancing to have to empty my bulging leg bag. At least, I don’t want to get out of bed and do it. Why in the hell would you when there’s a bunch of empties next to the bed.

And what self-respecting male hasn’t peed in a cup? I remember one time when I had to take a leak driving to West Texas in a friend’s speedy little coupe, but I didn’t want to pull over. There was this cheerleader out there waiting for me, and it was normally a twelve-hour drive, so, well, I wanted to make good time.

I whipped it out at 90 and peed precariously into an empty gas station cup, returned the lid, and gingerly placed it in a cup holder. I never accidentally drank that one.

Emptying a leg bag, on the other hand, into a can or cup at 90 is very tricky. I would not recommend it for drivers with little experience.

Okay, so it’s two weeks after my ingenious idea, and I’ve got a bedside table of cups, various sizes, full of a couple of weeks worth of liquor rent. I don’t know about the rest of you crips, but I flip flop in bed to keep away the dastardly decubes. I’ve always had a pressure sore on my ass, but I manage it. In other words, I manage to keep it from becoming a bloody mess.

One of those times that I flipped or flopped, I yanked the pillow out from between my knees for a casual repositioning, and down went the cups. All of them. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a perfect strike. The splashing on the wooden floor and the sound of urine running to the middle of the bowed floor meant more empties.

I went back to sleep. Hey, that’s what rental deposits are for.