Paradoxically Yours...

'Tripped' Memories

(prompt: 'trip' 20/10/2017)

"Me? Pick marijuana heads?" Sheesh! I'd done many things for this man - most willingly; somet grudgingly; but this? This was against deep moral principles. And this was after barely the first year since I'd stopped smoking myself. NOT marijuana, though! Uhrr no... tobacco proved quite enough of an addictive substance for whatever the guilty part of me was.

"Aw c'mon, Chris. Be a sport."

SPORT? I thought with disbelief, knowing my face showed anything but sportsmanship or team-spirit. Mate-ship had its limits.

"You know I'd do it if I could, but I'm flat out—" and he stopped to make a 'goony' grin, "... dreaming of adjustments to the speed of my book-page-turning machine. It's too slow for me these days." His bluer than summer sky eyes lit up with a devilish twinkle as he faked a deep Southern drawl - 'Jer-r-r-st ca-w-ll me Speedy Gonzales, honey-chile!"

And of course, next I was laughing, as he knew I would. He always figured how to get me onside with his latest schemes and dreams. He always knew I would weaken and do his bidding. I admired and cared for him so much. Of course, those incredible blue eyes and great long lashes that fellows get and ladies can only dream of were an obvious draw-card. Then there was Bill's spectacular intelligence, gleaned from his voracious appetite for learning and stunning photographic memory.

I believe people who suffer severe physical losses are given something special in compensation. Certainly, the courage quotient seems to rise to the occasion, along with patience, acceptance, and generally sucking it up and getting on with Life. Bill surely had done all of that, since his accident some 12 years before.

Riding his motorbike to University to attend yet another lecture in his beloved Engineering course, a truck ran a red light as he began to cross the intersection on a green. He knew a horrendous crash was inevitable and laid over on his bike in a last-ditch effort to slide beneath the truck and between its wheels. That was successful, but he impacted feet first into the concrete guttering, crushing vertebrae like an accordion on its inward squeeze. Bill remained conscious, capable of thankfulness that his brain was intact - "the body was too long and lanky to fuss about, but I could still think. That's what really mattered." In that instant, all 6'5" of him became a quadriplegic.

As one of Bill's several carers, I learned the most valuable Life lessons from this man. All of the aforementioned, plus the incredible benefits of smoking marijuana to tolerate and control the convulsions that would rack that helpless body from time to time. No 'tripping' in the druggy sense of the word, but truly awesome relief from an otherwise uncontrollable and distressing body malfunction.

That day, sly dog that he was, he cocked one eyebrow as he ran his eyes down his limited view of himself, and in his usual self-deprecating manner, said, "I don't seem to take the same kind of trips these days as once upon a time."