Born To Be Wild

The other day as I continued my project scanning all the images I have onto the hard drive I came upon a packet of images from my early rehabilitation days should be late summer or early fall 1966. When this picture was taken I had been at the Elks Rehabilitation Center for maybe two months. I think by the time this image is taken I had pretty much gotten over the physical shock of the accident and was slowly acclimating to my new life in a wheelchair. They say that becoming a person with a disability doesn't really change that individual's personality all that much. There is certainly some adjusting going on during the transition phase but essentially return to their basic self in my case I think I reverted back early to my bizarre self fairly soon. I have no idea where this (I don't know if it's an old World War I or World War II) helmet came from. My mother was married to another guy before my dad and I think the other guy was a veteran of World War II and brought back some souvenirs one which was a regular Nazi helmet which I thought was really cool. However, the helmet in this image is very heavy and has the tags on each side which makes me think it might be World War I as opposed to World War II. There is no helmet liner so the helmet sat pretty heavy on my head and low. I don't know if the iron Cross was on the helmet when it first showed up it did not seem that it was – – perhaps my younger brother Paul painted the helmet and put the iron Cross on the helmet. I don't know her I got that red vest either it was made of some sort of wool or acrylic material. I remember I love drilling up and down the halls of the Center just for effect of folks visiting. I thought this outfit may be a real bad ass, which I was not, I was probably a pretty major wuss. Interesting to note my hands did not really have the monkey paw appearance at that point in my life. I know this because I was self-conscious because the other quads on the ward with me hands already had that quadriplegic paralyze can look. I think there is even times when I was with them I tried to make my hands look more affected than they were. Perhaps it was a form of survivor's guilt.

I spent 8 to 10 weeks at the Elks Rehabilitation Center before transitioned home. Fortunately for my family are home did not need much modification. It had been built on a slab everything was flat and the doors were wide enough to accept my chair. It's almost like something or someone knew what was coming. The whole family pretty much accepted me in my new lifestyle which I guess is pretty much a new lifestyle for the family as well. I'm surprised I did not get more blame for family disruption that I probably caused. We did pretty good except in the little Nazi into the fold