Miracle Boy Grows Up Read Free Page B

beige armchair in the mostly quiet, fluorescently lit, antiseptic waiting room. I’m nearly six years old, and I have nothing to do.
    Why didn’t Alec have to come, to keep me company? Not that he would play with me. My older brother is nothing like me. A thin, spirited boy with straight dark-reddish-brown hair and a gap between his front top teeth, he’s brainy and competitive, likes to play chess and baseball and go bowling. I, on the other hand, have big blue eyes and a mop of unruly blond hair, an adorable Cupid look. Mom’s friends say they wish they had my curls, which I don’t understand because I hate my hair. I want it to be straight, like I see on TV.
    On Saturdays Alec goes to a sports camp while I watch cartoons, and in the summer a sleepaway camp in New Hampshire while I stay home and look for ways to pass the time.
    Now, in the hermetic waiting room, I imagine leaping through the big, half-sunny window, kicking past the rattling glass and landing catlike on the street below just in time to chase away a squadron of bad guys. I’d roll on the ground to avoid their gunfire and then grab a loose drainpipe or tree branch and knock them all out till the police come. . . . I can pass a lot of time imagining highly athletic action scenes. But alas, I soon discover it’s not enough time, and my boredom resumes. I can’t hold up a magazine or book, and there’s no table I can get to to roll my toy cars on if I had any toy cars with me. Not that this boredom is exactly an unfamiliar phenomenon. At home, when there’s no school, I complain a lot about having nothing to do. I play with my toy cars and tell myself stories until these activities bore me, too. My parents are always trying to come up with new forms of autonomous entertainment for me, beyond TV. Coloring books, cards, Etch-a-Sketch, Colorforms. If only we’d had computers then! (Perhaps this is why, in 1972, when I’m nine, we become one of the first American families to buy the Magnavox Odyssey video game console, once I demonstrate that I’m able to manipulate the controller.)
    Why do I have to go to so many doctors? I wonder now.
    In truth, Dr. Spiro is one of my favorites. Every year, before the private parent conference, he examines me and talks to me in a soft, cheerful manner. He asks me to squeeze his fingers, follow his penlight with my eyes, stick out my tongue, feel the vibrations of his tuning fork against my knees and ankles (and tell him when the vibrations stop), and perform other easy tasks to measure my muscles and nerve responses. It always seems to impress him that I’m not stone paralyzed or retarded!
    I like the attention. I don’t mind being on display. It’s best if I can stay in my wheelchair and not get lifted onto his hard, narrow examination table and have my clothes taken off. But either way—in my chair or on his examination table, dressed or naked—I try to put on a good performance. I’m famous for my good humor and bravery. I never even cry at shots.
    Finally, finally, finally the door opens and Mom and Dad come out and they’re smiling and talking and shake hands with Dr. Spiro, who waves at me.
    “So what was that all about?” I ask in the elevator. Dad’s pushing me. I’m facing the back wall but it’s a mirror so that’s okay.
    “Just grown-up talk,” says Mom.
    Mom is intense and coiled-up inside, like something forceful and beautiful wrapped in a tight package. She’s about a foot shorter than Dad; Dad’s a good six-feet-two-inches, with broad shoulders, though he’s not athletic. One of the things Mom and Dad have in common is a great faith in doctors. To them, medical science holds all the answers. “It’s not so many years since a man named Dr. Salk cured polio,” Mom has told me many times.
    I’m not too keen on the idea of a cure for my amyotonia, though. I’m used to my life as it is and any change would be really weird to get used to. I’m not so badly off as many people think I am.