I was thinking today (not yesterday, though. It was a holiday for me,) that we clubbies, like most folks with handicaps, have a requirement the non-handicapped don't ever need to face. It's hard to imagine living without the constant reminder of our handicaps. For some, its the chronic pain. For others, it might be the social stigma. Or employment discrimination (it might be illegal, but who really pays attention to that, I ask you?) But whatever the primary focus, it just doesn't often happen we can go a day or so without being reminded of our limiting factors.
It was only when I was trying to explain to my sig-other about how the pain factors in to just about everything I hope to do in life that I could see the true distance across this divide. She, for example, thinks absolutely nothing (well, not exactly true - sometimes she thinks only) about going into a shoe store and freely obsessing over the latest John Fluevogs (I couldn't begin to describe them - look them up,) and then coming home to help her drool over them. Which is where I fail as a husband, I suppose. My shoes, after all, cost waaaaaaayyyyyy more than hers, and they don't come from a store. They come from my long-time colleague and fellow shoemaker, Sal. And I usually have to save up for six months to afford them.
You are probably wondering about now why I am going on about shoes, using it as an example of the divide between us handicapped and those nons. Its like this. Sal, bless his hard-working heart, has the Big C. Just couldn't stop smoking. And then there is the adhesives and dust inherent to the trade. And even though he has insisted on continuing to work, he has finally set a date-certain for retirement. I just gave him a deposit on what will be the last pair of shoes he will make for me. In six months, I need to find a new shoemaker. One that "gets it." One within a five-hundred mile radius, hopefully.
My wife just goes to the local malls and such. So she doesn't get how this is not merely a story of Googling for an answer. It's much, much harder than that. It takes an awful lot of mind-time, and really stokes the old anxiety boiler, ya dig?
I'd rather be shopping for a brain surgeon.
I think my wife hopes I find one.
It was only when I was trying to explain to my sig-other about how the pain factors in to just about everything I hope to do in life that I could see the true distance across this divide. She, for example, thinks absolutely nothing (well, not exactly true - sometimes she thinks only) about going into a shoe store and freely obsessing over the latest John Fluevogs (I couldn't begin to describe them - look them up,) and then coming home to help her drool over them. Which is where I fail as a husband, I suppose. My shoes, after all, cost waaaaaaayyyyyy more than hers, and they don't come from a store. They come from my long-time colleague and fellow shoemaker, Sal. And I usually have to save up for six months to afford them.
You are probably wondering about now why I am going on about shoes, using it as an example of the divide between us handicapped and those nons. Its like this. Sal, bless his hard-working heart, has the Big C. Just couldn't stop smoking. And then there is the adhesives and dust inherent to the trade. And even though he has insisted on continuing to work, he has finally set a date-certain for retirement. I just gave him a deposit on what will be the last pair of shoes he will make for me. In six months, I need to find a new shoemaker. One that "gets it." One within a five-hundred mile radius, hopefully.
My wife just goes to the local malls and such. So she doesn't get how this is not merely a story of Googling for an answer. It's much, much harder than that. It takes an awful lot of mind-time, and really stokes the old anxiety boiler, ya dig?
I'd rather be shopping for a brain surgeon.
I think my wife hopes I find one.
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