Feeling: Grateful
Listening to: Matt Caplan, "Sideways"
Reading/Watching: Goethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge

My best friend has no feet.

I started thinking about what I would do if I were Bri. If every step took about twice as much energy, if going down a step the wrong way could result in a metal spoke jabbing me in the end of my knee. If elevators and handicapped parking spaces were taken by lazy people, and at five p.m. after walking on my knees all day I'm ready to drop, but I still take the stairs and the back parking spot. (Except if I'm Bri, I'm also liable to leave one of her patented "Stupidity does not count as a handicap" business cards on their windshield.)

I don't think I would suffer as much as she does. I already am a lazy bum. I like things like dinners and movies, writing and theater, all things that require a nice cushy bottom, not very nimble feet. She was in colorguard, and a third-degree blackbelt. She lost something substantial.

Which got me thinking about what I'd do if I lost something more important to me. Like my hands.

If I lost my hands, I could never play piano again, or type, or do those crazed gestures when I'm having an emphatic conversation. But I would get computer software for typing. I would sing my heart out, instead of piano. I would deal.

If I lost my eyes, I would never see skies or trees or oceans again. I would never watch a squirrel lash his tail, or grin because a butterfly landed on my window. I would never drive a car. I would never read a book. The internet would kinda be difficult to manage. But I would take taxis, and learn braille, and remember beautiful things instead of actually seeing them. It would suffice. I would survive.

If I lost my sense of smell, I wouldn't have to cringe walking past dumpsters, wouldn't go crazy living in a smelly city like my hometown. If not for the loss of magnolias, Italian food, and mown grass, I'd give up my sense of smell right now. Same with taste (no more skunk-tongue driving in the hill country!). Definitely do-able.

Losing my sense of touch would make things awkward. Not sure how far that would extend. Maybe to complete paralysis. In which case I'd make people take care of me, but I would still be able to communicate with the world. I could still sing. I could dictate poems and stories to someone else to type. I could be Stephen Hawking, and still handle it.

If I was like Charlie in Flowers For Algernon, and suddenly lost my intelligence, I would be devastated. I'd probably do as he did, desperately trying to read books I'd once loved, fighting as hard as I could to regain what I truly believed was mine. I'd be like my mom, after her brain surgery in highschool, when she slaved over her schoolwork and still graduated valedictorian. I would prove my brain still worked. And if I couldn't, I wouldn't be smart enough to know the difference. And eventually I would let myself forget how it was.

But if I went deaf.

I already am, partially. One ear is only half there- doesn't pick up the upper register at all. It's never been there, actually, like wires that were never hooked up. It's impossible to really gauge what I'm missing, but the thought of losing all of it... I couldn't do it.

No more running water. No sound of popcorn, crunching leaves, a cat purring. No more ticking clocks. No more murmur of voices on the floors below me. No more laughter, no more music. I would never be able to sing again, never even be able to hear someone else singing.

Losing my ears, I would lose my mind. It is not fair that I've already lost part of them. Looking at all the things I could lose, I'm still bitter that this has to be the thing that's going, and not something else easier to give up. But I still have it. And all the above. They are mine.

I will now go to the practice rooms and sing myself hoarse.

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