After four operations on his feet, Greg wrote a column entitled "Walking is No Easy Feat" . The column ran in Senior News. To read the column, scroll down.
WALKING IS NO EASY FEAT
By Greg Forbes Siegman
If it is true that you can never really appreciate the life someone else leads until you have walked in their shoes, just imagine what you might discover if you stepped in the shoes of someone who cannot walk at all.
In 1999, I understood that for the first time when I began to feel incredible pain in both feet. I had two operations but there was no improvement and found myself confronted with an unexpected reality. Just a few months shy of my 27th birthday, I did not know if I would ever walk again without pain.
This summer, after spending the better part of the last two years exploring every other possible route– ice packs, physical therapy, orthotics, you name it– I went back under the knife. The operations on both feet appear to have gone well, and I am optimistic about the results. In the meantime, having spent more time in a wheelchair, I was reminded yet again that the ability to walk is not a guaranteed, constitutional right. It is a privilege.
I only wish more kids could realize this lesson. Fortunately, at their age, most of them can run, jump and walk to their heart’s content. So the question becomes how do you teach kids to appreciate their ability to walk when it has never been taken away?
Two ideas come to mind. First, students ought to be required to learn more about feet– and specifically, learn more about the people who no longer have ones that work and about the doctors who do their best to fix them.
Second, every student should have to spend one full week of high school in a wheelchair– not just at school but at home. At first, they might actually enjoy it– all the affection and attention they get from the many nice people who go out of their way to help someone in a wheelchair if asked. But as the hours turn into days, the novelty of the chair wears off and the spotlight dims, their smile may disappear as well.
When it takes 60 seconds instead of ten to cross a street, they will learn a wheelchair is not a glorified go-cart. When every crack in the sidewalk becomes a major bump in the road, they will see why patience is a necessity not a virtue. When their neck and back ache, they will understand why it is not so fun to be confined to a seat for hours at a time. When their arms feel like they are going to fall off– and when the skin on the side of their hands literally does– they will discover that spinning the chairs wheels around and around all day long can be even more painful than the feet that require the chair in the first place.
When they get caught in the rain but cannot run inside, when an insensitive customer laughs at their futile efforts to reach the popcorn on the top shelf at the grocery store, when they drop their key and have to wait four minutes for someone else to come along to pick it up for them, the students will have an increased level of respect for those who use wheelchairs on a permanent basis, and they will be begging to walk in someone else’s shoes– anyone else’s shoes– as long as they are allowed to walk while they do it.
##
By Greg Forbes Siegman
If it is true that you can never really appreciate the life someone else leads until you have walked in their shoes, just imagine what you might discover if you stepped in the shoes of someone who cannot walk at all.
In 1999, I understood that for the first time when I began to feel incredible pain in both feet. I had two operations but there was no improvement and found myself confronted with an unexpected reality. Just a few months shy of my 27th birthday, I did not know if I would ever walk again without pain.
This summer, after spending the better part of the last two years exploring every other possible route– ice packs, physical therapy, orthotics, you name it– I went back under the knife. The operations on both feet appear to have gone well, and I am optimistic about the results. In the meantime, having spent more time in a wheelchair, I was reminded yet again that the ability to walk is not a guaranteed, constitutional right. It is a privilege.
I only wish more kids could realize this lesson. Fortunately, at their age, most of them can run, jump and walk to their heart’s content. So the question becomes how do you teach kids to appreciate their ability to walk when it has never been taken away?
Two ideas come to mind. First, students ought to be required to learn more about feet– and specifically, learn more about the people who no longer have ones that work and about the doctors who do their best to fix them.
Second, every student should have to spend one full week of high school in a wheelchair– not just at school but at home. At first, they might actually enjoy it– all the affection and attention they get from the many nice people who go out of their way to help someone in a wheelchair if asked. But as the hours turn into days, the novelty of the chair wears off and the spotlight dims, their smile may disappear as well.
When it takes 60 seconds instead of ten to cross a street, they will learn a wheelchair is not a glorified go-cart. When every crack in the sidewalk becomes a major bump in the road, they will see why patience is a necessity not a virtue. When their neck and back ache, they will understand why it is not so fun to be confined to a seat for hours at a time. When their arms feel like they are going to fall off– and when the skin on the side of their hands literally does– they will discover that spinning the chairs wheels around and around all day long can be even more painful than the feet that require the chair in the first place.
When they get caught in the rain but cannot run inside, when an insensitive customer laughs at their futile efforts to reach the popcorn on the top shelf at the grocery store, when they drop their key and have to wait four minutes for someone else to come along to pick it up for them, the students will have an increased level of respect for those who use wheelchairs on a permanent basis, and they will be begging to walk in someone else’s shoes– anyone else’s shoes– as long as they are allowed to walk while they do it.
##