Globechaser
I had expected my drive from Oregon to Globe’s home in Canada to be a solid six hours. That even included some time for short rests and a meal. The interstate just south of Seattle, however, was clogged.
I have learned not to complain too much about life’s petty frustrations. Traffic is a hassle but even this jam, which was to rob me of nearly four hours of my life, is a relatively insignificant occurrence. Everything is diminished before the specter of paralysis.
Time is one of the things lost to spinal injuries. Since everything takes longer, you really don’t have the same 24 hour day that able bodied people do. You learn to make do with less and accept the less you can do. Time wasting is endemic to the world of disability.
The clock ticks, but like yourself, it is broken. You wait and wait, go forward a bit, then wait some more. You let go of expectations and operate in the unique realm of dysfunctional passivity where less must be more.
So it is with a traffic jam. I accept the waste of time and the futility of my predicament. My mind is rapt with wonder and I live in the journey not the destination. Eight hours into my travels, I finally reach the border and immediately join a queue of cars stopped within view of the gates.
Border crossings are not what they used to be. Even the innocuous frontier between these two compatible nations has, since 9/11, become a point of intense scrutiny. In spite of impeccable identity documents, I was asked to park and present them inside the immigration office for further examination.
There, after several minutes, a female officer in full battle dress with a large pistol at her hip and wearing a vest of body armor, efficiently breached my veneer. “What was the reason for my visit? Who was I visiting? Where did she live? With whom did she live? How did you meet this person?” Briefly, even I wondered what the hell I was doing in Canada...and why, I wondered, am I feeling so guilty?.
*****
Globe is a second generation Canadian citizen of Indian descent. She was born and raised in a small community in Manitoba and is, in her own words, a prairie girl. Her family moved to western Canada in the mid-nineties.
She has a degree in English Literature from the University of British Columbia. She is an accomplished amateur pianist and vocalist. As a world class athlete in wheelchair racing, she loves to travel. She has visited Japan, India, Australia, Europe, much of Canada and the United States. At the last Olympic qualifier, she came in the dreaded fourth place. Only three get to go. She continues to train regularly for national competitions.
Globe is an advocate for the SCI community. In 2005 she received a Province of British Columbia Community Achievement Award in recognition of her volunteer work as a peer mentor. She is a second year law student at the University of Victoria. Globe is the subject of numerous newspaper articles. She is 23 years old. She was injured the day before her sixth birthday in 1988.
Oh, Canada!
class they would go and they would cry. Because it was too overwhelming to try and understand why this had to happen to me, because they knew me before my injury and after. And I was a good kid - it would be devastating to know that about anyone.
So what they would do - they were emotional, and obviously they were feeling the way they were feeling outside of the classroom. But inside the classroom they did whatever they could to make me feel like there was nothing wrong with me. And so that stuck with me for a good chunk of my life.
And then, once again, when I moved out here - there was no one else in a chair at my high school. So I started to feel disabled. I felt that just because of things that weren’t happening to me that were happening to other people. I became part of the popular crowd, so there were girls that were making the cheer leading team, and there were girls that were getting asked out by guys, and you know, all sorts of things. And I was the friend. I was always the friend, you know?”
“I didn’t see myself as disabled until the environment around me told me I was disabled. Because in the small town I grew up in I wasn’t. I think the teachers made an extra effort. It was so interesting to hear later on.
These were my teachers that had known me since I was born. They would have me in their class, and then after
