ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS THE IMPOSSIBLE

DEAR SANTA:

(By EarthBound Tomboy: Heidi Johnson-Wright)

Greetings, my friend in red. Hope this missive finds you and yours in fine form. With all this talk of global warming, I worry that Donner and Blitzen are applying Coppertone while Dasher and Dancer compete to craft the perfect cannonball in the deep end. (If you’re a regular viewer of “Fox and Friends,” then please accept my apology. I don’t intend to offend.)

It’s true I haven’t written since last year and it seems I reach out only when I want something, but I imagine that’s simply business as usual in your line of work. So, let me get straight to the point: I’m only asking for one thing this year, but it’s a doozy. (Yes, Kris, you’re probably thinking “Why can’t she be content with another Chia Pet?” But until they come up with the Chia Cthulhu, please no more ceramic weed farms.)

I’ve decided to go for broke this year. My first thought was to ask for a shopping spree at a Pucci boutique. A new wardrobe of gorgeous abstract prints and fine fabrics would be just the ticket for a vacation at a Venetian villa. (You could throw that in, too, right?) But that seemed a little too pedestrian.

Then I considered asking you for a week at the Four Seasons Bora Bora, an all-expenses paid, once-in-a lifetime trip with my significant other and 10 of my dearest friends. Each of us could have our own villa over the turquoise waters. How divine! Then I imagined running into Justin Bieber au natural and I felt as queasy as the time I competed in that corn dog eating contest. Ick.

Then I thought: wouldn’t it be heavenly to rent out the Hollywood Bowl and have Kate Bush perform all her tracks from “Hounds of Love” and “The Dreaming”? The audience would consist of just me, my husband and our two kitties sitting in La-Z-Boy recliners on the stage right next to Her Royal Kateness. Oh, and Weird Al Yankovik could be the opening act! 

But then I thought, no, I’m going to swing for the fences this Christmas. I’m going to ask for something so spectacular, so marvelous, so blow-the-doors-off incredible that my friends will be simply chartreuse with envy. 

That’s right, Santa: I want a ride with Uber. 

But wait, please, before you crumple up my letter and use it to wipe the reindeer doo-doo off your boots; please just hear me out! If Uber – or Lyft or any smart phone-booked ride service – can provide rides to the non-disabled, they can do it for wheelchair users, right?

It’s an eleventy-bajillion dollar business, so surely they can have drivers in every major market with wheelchair-lift vans, can’t they? These titans of industry can be convinced that disenfranchising an entire segment of society is not just illegal but morally wrong?

Please, Santa, tell me I’ll someday be able to book a ride on Uber with the same ease and speed as anyone else! 

Ok, I’ll settle for a ride in your sleigh. Sure beats seeing the Biebs nekkid. 

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2015/12/dear-santa-all-i-want-for-christmas-is.html 

Become Famous! Get Hit by a Car!

earthbound tomboy

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

 

About a week before the end of the fifth grade school year, I was hit by a car.

It was a rainy afternoon when the school day ended. I had ridden my banana seat bike to school and would now have to ride home in the rain without a jacket. I would also have to negotiate a line of backed-up traffic. In our bedroom community, nearly every mom was of the stay-at-home variety. Now a legion of them was swarming the school to pick up their kids. To let kids walk home in the rain meant they were in the same “bad mother” category as women who used Hamburger Helper as a crutch instead of making home-made meatloaf.

As I came out of the building my mom was there, with my raincoat in hand. I whined that I wanted her to put my bike in the trunk and drive me home. She insisted I would be fine on my bike, that I needed the exercise and could negotiate the half dozen blocks on my own. She was right, but something made me uneasy. I put on my coat and headed for the bike rack.

One second I was leaning over to unlock my bike, the next I was lying on pavement surrounded by a group of kneeling adults. My eyes slowly began to focus on the faces of my third grade teacher, my fifth grade teacher and my mom. I could hear people crying and sirens wailing. My mind was equally split between panic and “what the hell?”

A mother had jumped the curb with her car and mowed through the school yard. Had she wanted to inflict maximum damage, she couldn’t have picked a better spot: right through a crowd of kids at the bike rack. I had gotten a glancing blow that fractured my leg. When I fell, my head hit the pavement and I received a concussion and the retrograde amnesia that went with it. I was the second worst casualty; another little girl had actually been run over and was in critical condition.

Had I been an average kid, I would have been sent home with a simple cast and crutches and told to use my arms and other leg to get around. But the arthritis's damage to my wrists meant I couldn’t use standard crutches. Nor could my one good leg bear the weight of two. Instead, I went home with a long leg cast with a rubber heel on the bottom and a platform walker without wheels that was so heavy and primitive, it would have been better suited to Herman Munster.

The first two weeks after the accident were a non-stop procession of my parents’ friends dropping by to offer condolences and nights on the couch in agony as my tibia began to knit. By week three, the pain eased and I traded out the long cast for a below-the-knee model. It was then that I began to enjoy my new-found status as a local celebrity.

In my town, the mere possibility of a McDonald’s opening – the only chain fast food joint besides a Dairy Queen -- was cause for controversy and excitement. So it’s not hard to imagine how just being one of those girls that got hit by that car at the school upped my suburban Q score considerably. But this time my notoriety had nothing to do with my arthritis and everything to do with fame earned by mere happenstance. I was "famous" for being famous. Kind of like being a Kardashian.

Friends dropped by my house daily: close friends, casual friends, even long-lost ones. Often they had a card or a small gift, and a story or joke to share. Naturally, they wanted to hear my version of The Accident. Did I see the car flying toward me or hear the engine rev? (No and no.) Did I remember being hit? (No, but I had nightmares about menacing cars.) What was it like to ride in the ambulance? (Claustrophobic.) Did my leg itch inside the cast? (Often.)

An older sister of one of my friends worked as a summer parks employee, teaching arts and crafts to kids. Several times she brought me goodie bags loaded with supplies and trinkets from her class. Though I couldn’t get out of the house to catch butterflies, I enjoyed the treasures she brought. On hot afternoons, I sipped my mom’s sweet tea while I taught myself to make lanyards and drew pastel sketches of fuchsia plants in hanging pots.

My leg healed fine by the end of July, but the weight of the cast and my struggle to walk with it had put a lot of strain on my knee. It swelled to soft ball size and hurt like hell. I lived in daily fear that I would need to have it aspirated, a procedure in which a large needle is inserted deep into the joint and fluid is withdrawn.

I was starting junior high in the fall. Grades six through nine were housed in a building bigger than my old school, which meant a lot more walking between classes. The school was too far away to walk to it, so I’d have to depend on a bus that was supposed to change its route and stop in front of my house. I was nervous about meeting new teachers and kids, brand new people to whom I’d have to explain why I limped or why I sometimes struggled to get up out of a chair.    

The richly-symbolic menacing cars and the increasing awareness of my precarious health were always with me, in the back of my mind, as I drifted into sleep on late summer nights while the crickets chirped and the cicadas sang.