Everyone Has Chapters

Everyone’s life is made of chapters. There are good chapters and there are bad chapters. There are chapters of love and chapters of hate and chapters of apathy and chapters of excitement. People in your life are the characters of course, in these chapters. The people tend to follow the unwritten rule of servitude and everyone manages to get by and for the most part everyone is happy...for the most part. Occasionally one of these characters will show up over and over again even if you wish they would not. Twenty some years ago such a character came into my life. Though challenging in nature this person has been one of the most colorful pages in my history

Mr. No Arms showed up in my life when I was working as a Resource Coordinator for an Independent Living Center, I spent my days searching for solutions for people needing housing, transportation and anything else people with disabilities might need to survive independently. I was called my the Social Work department of a local nursing home ( now Long term Care Center(LTC). The LTC needed to find a place to live for one of their “clients”: Mr No Arms.

Mr. No Arms became disabled one evening when (as the official story goes) laid on the rail road tracks , not far from “Hobo Inn”, intoxicated to awaken hours later trying to push a locomotive off of himself. In the process the locomotive cleaved off both arms so far up and into his torso there was nothing left to hang prosthetic devices off of. When Mr. No Arms wore a tee shirt he had to keep having the shirt re-centered on his body so the shirt would not slid down what was left of his shoulders. Mr. No Arms is amazing to me. A brilliant cranky as hell even before his “accident” Irish Catholic stranded in Utah against his will.

Well, this is actually kind of a preface to a book I am thinking about—you know with the names changed to protect the innocent. Anyway, Mr. N.AM called today but I was on the phone and could not take his call. Actually the guy sort of scares me. For someone without any warms he has a propensity to get in trouble. He was always been evicted from his housing or being thrown in jail for one ting or another. He had on going relationships with bikers, known offenders and elements of organized crime in one form or another. Mr. N.A. wants to relocate back to his hometown back East and as hard as I have tried to get him there we have never succeeded. Sometimes I go years without hearing from him. Mr. N.A. surfaced today threatening to come in to my office. This cannot be good. He lives 40 miles away. He has to find someone who has a vehicle and willing to drive him all the way here, wait round and drive him back…that is unless he has relocated to this city and then a whole new chapter could be opening up.

Actually, I like Mr. NA he just scares me. I really believe he could have me rubbed out if he wanted to. Maybe, but if he had that kind of power you would think he would just blow this town. In all reality he is just a severely, disabled aging white guy; a stranger in a strange land.