Using "crutch" as a pejorative word? Somehow, the way the word is often used (capo="cowboy's crutch," et al.) has never bothered me. And I would think that I'd be on the forefront of those slated to be offended, but I can't say that I actually ever have.

I contracted polio when I was two years and three months old. It rendered both of my legs pretty much non-functional, so it's a condition I grew up with. As a youngster I could not walk, and was either carried or was pushed about in a stroller, which, at the age of five can feel pretty undignified. But when I was six, it was deemed by orthopedic physicians that I was old enough to learn to use leg braces and crutches.

Braces and crutches did not stop me from playing with the neighborhood kids, yet it was decided by the Pasadena School Board (living in Pasadena, CA at the time) that, rather than having me come to public school, they would send a home teacher to our house several times a week. This was not special treatment; it was a service they provided so that "crippled children" would not be deprived of an education. So with private tutoring, I got a pretty darn good education, and I tended to develop a fairly studious nature. I first started going to public school in my high school junior year. Then I went on to college, tromping all over the University of Washington campus wearing a leg brace and using aluminum forearm crutches. I was not the only one. On a campus of some 15,000 students at the time, there were several dozen who used aids of one sort or another, including a number of older students, disabled veterans going to school on the G.I. Bill. We had elevator privileges in all the campus buildings.

So, basically, I've had a normal life. I had acclimated fairly quickly to to the physical disability and rarely thought about it. I was far more interested in other things, and it rarely interfered with anything I wanted to do.

I also had a rich, full, social life all this time. Lots of activities of various kinds, I dated, and had girlfriends. In fact, it was one of these girlfriends who taught me my first chords on the guitar and started the chain of events that led me to want to do something with the singing lessons I was taking just for fun, and actually sing for people, like Burl Ives or Susan Reed or Richard Dyer-Bennet, (well-known singers of folk songs at the time), or locally, Walt Robertson.

Over the years, I worked at a number of different jobs, including draftsman and production illustrator at Boeing, radio announcer, telephone operator, and technical writer. These were day jobs. I also taught classic and folk guitar, both privately and in classes, and I have had a most enjoyable career singing folk songs and ballads and playing classical guitar in clubs, coffeehouses, in concerts and recitals, and on television.

When I walked on stage, it is, of course, using my crutches. I performed sitting on a straight-back chair, raising my left foot about six inches with a foot stool, and placing the guitar on my left leg—standard classic guitar position (CLICKY), which, as long as one doesn't slump over the guitar, is also a good position for singing (keeping my breath control under me). I either had my guitar set onstage beforehand sitting on a guitar stand beside the chair, or someone followed me on stage carrying my guitar and handed it too me once I was seated.

World renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, who contracted polio when he was six, makes his way on and off stage much as I do. Audiences seem to absorb this very quickly and turn their attention to what they are there for:   the music.

During the time I was in high school, I learned to fence, first at the local YMCA, then I had some lessons from a man who was an Olympic coach at the time (too long a story to go into now), competed in regular tournaments with fully ambulatory fencers (not wheelchair fencing or Special Olympics, and with no special provisions made for me) and won a satisfying number of medals and trophies.

I have never climbed Mt. Everest, nor have I scaled the sheer face of El Capitan, but I can't say that these feats were ever high on my list of things I felt I needed to accomplish. On the other hand, on several occasions a friend and I swam in depths of both Lake Washington and Puget Sound, using scuba gear. I am an excellent swimmer.

Twenty-two years ago I fell and broke my "good" leg, and had to take to a wheelchair. But even with my advanced years, the voice is holding up well and I still sing here and there from time to time. And because a full-size guitar is difficult to hold while sitting in a wheelchair (the lower bout of the guitar and the right wheel of the chair want to occupy the same space), I use a small, but well-made and surprisingly full-sounding travel guitar which I play using a shoulder strap.

Has anybody much made any kind of big deal of my physical disability? Not in any important way. There have been a couple of times when my wife and I have been somewhere (me in my wheelchair), and someone who doesn't know us will talk to Barbara as if I'm not there ("Would your husband care for something to drink?"), apparently assuming that if the legs don't work, the ears and brain don't either, to which Barbara responds, "I suggest that you ask him." I then smile sweetly and say in my most resonant radio-announcer voice, "Yes, please. That would be very nice." They generally blink a couple of times, get the idea that I am not an inanimate object, and from then on include me in the conversation.

Does this sort of thing bother me? Not particularly. The problem is theirs, not mine. Oftentimes a fine mind is locked into a body that doesn't work very well, and those who can't see past the obvious could miss out on a lot. If you see a fellow tooling along in an electric wheelchair, with a wasted looking body, barely able to move his head, and unable to speak clearly, except through a computer he has mounted to his chair—well—think about Steven Hawking.

There are terms and expressions that some folks use, or used to use, that may be considered offensive, such as "crippled" or "handicapped" or "disabled." Frankly, I tend to be offended by the overly solicitous "politically correct" efforts at non-offensive circumlocutions such as "differently abled." What the hell! If I can't walk, then I can't walk. That's not a "different ability." That's a lack of ability. A non-ability. A DISability.

Let's look at it this way:   The word "handicap" started sometime in the 1600s and consisted of a sort of lottery, in which the money was held in the referee's cap. Later, it became associated with horse racing, where, to make the outcome of a race less certain, the faster horses were required to carry extra weight, giving the slower horses, if not an edge, at least a better chance. If a bettor wanted to know how much extra weight a particular horse was carrying, that information was kept in the cap of an official, and you could learn it by asking the official, who would then put his hand in his cap and pull out the information you wanted. So "What is 'Greased Lightning's' hand-i'-cap?" morphed into "What's the horse's handicap?" In short, how much extra weight is the horse carrying? It was not until around 1915 that the word "handicapped" was applied to those with physical disabilities.

Therefore—If the Powers That Be deemed it necessary that I should be "handicapped" so that that all those normal people out there can have a fair chance in the Race of Life, then—

Get it? Got it? Good!

Don Firth