![]() My parents, whom I’m visiting this summer, have mostly learned to steer clear of its lair. Anniversaries have a way of inviting the forceful jaws of signification to clamp down upon the vagaries of lived experience. Yet the imperative to explain myself-the discomfiting, demonstrative, vaguely atavistic sight of my brace, cane, uneven gait-has skulked at closer range these past few days. Startling numbers of people feel that “What happened to you?” makes for an acceptable conversation starter. I am not unique in this regard, or so my friends with other disabilities (visible and invisible alike) tell me. ![]() Perhaps because fielding comments to this end-on airplanes, at garden parties, in grocery checkout lines-proves so regular as to be banal. But rarely have I discussed how frequently people-no matter the transience of our acquaintance-feel compelled to make sense of the beguiling body that roams (or rather limps across) the earth as a result. Elsewhere, I’ve written about how the spinal-cord injury that followed has shaped my life for the better part of a decade now. On July 5, my family and I recognized an unusual anniversary: nine years had passed since a red pick-up truck knocked me from my bicycle onto the pavement below. John Milton, Second Defense of the English People (1654) E reproaches me with want of beauty and loss of sight: “A monster huge and hideous, void of sight.” … ut he immediately corrects himself, and says, “though not indeed huge, for there cannot be a more spare, shrivelled and bloodless form.” It is of no moment to say any thing of personal appearance, yet lest … any one, from the representations of my enemies, should be let to imagine that I have either the head of a dog, or the horn of a rhinoceros, I will say something on the subject.
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