I went swimming from the age of 4 every week at school with my class and enjoyed it very much indeed. Then when I was 8 my dad bought James, my brother, a Table Tennis table which lay on top of the gleaming mahogany, rectangular dining room table as it didn't have any legs. You had to set the net up by securing it with two clamps, and we had to wait until dad was in the house not doing anything to have the table carried from the study where it sat, which was just off the dining room, to the dining room, as carting it from one room to the other was a rather awkward two-people task which I couldn't do since I have Cerebral Palsy. Initially lifting it was an event in itself and was loudly said to be by mum, but dad and James soon got used to it and did it quicker and quicker each time until they found a certain optimum length of time in which to do it that was quick enough such that you couldn't laugh at them but which allowed them to be careful when carrying it and allowed them to find it a pleasure.
I did not play it to start off with because I had quite a bad balance problem (I can't walk any more due to epilepsy), but because James approached me thrice about playing him, I relented after three weeks and decided to give it a go. I knew, secretly from my family and secretly to most people in my life, that James had Cystic Fibrosis because there were boys at my school with it and he looked just like them. This meant at this point in time that if I got good at the table tennis game through practise, I needed not to challenge him to much physically since he was not physically able to be to active.
I went to a special school for the physically disabled, which there were in the 70s and 80s when I was schooled, where, as I said, there were older kids with CF whom I passed in the corridor sometimes. I noted their slim build, their difficulty in breathing, their blue lips, and most tellingly, their in-turned fingernails by looking at them through the bus window which was waiting for everyone to come on board. I compared their breathing with my bus driver’s since his was normal, but was accused of being a perv for staring at them through the bus window. James was exactly the same as them, so I knew he had CF. I obviously got psychology this, for being a “perv out the bus window”, but I can't remember what the psychologist said to me about me thinking that James had CF when dad had a pharmacy degree - I thought that dad was just not letting on, because pharmacists need to know every condition that any member of the public may have. I think dad intended James to go to the private school just over the road to foster James’s mind and nurture James’s Christian faith, rather than allowing him to go to Graysmill, my school, which would give him all the medical care that was on the market but which would not give him many, or perhaps any, friends who had a similar intelligence level, quite apart from my dad’s secret lack of faith in contemporary medicine. He had a quality of life thing going on in his mind. Anyway, I definitely remember getting an awful amount of respect when James was eventually diagnosed with CF.
As well as perving, or gawking, I also stopped one of the boys with CF once in the corridor and asked him what it was like to have it, as I felt school was too good an opportunity to miss having quiet exchanges with each other about each other’s conditions. When you are in a bad situation you must take advantage of the positives as best you can, and the positive this time was that I actually had people who were able to tell me what exactly CF was like so that I could know for sure whether or not James had it. He replied that you cough a lot, which James did, have physiotherapy 4 times a day before every meal, which James did not have, you have a ventilator to help you breathe, which James did not have either, and you need to take lots of tablets, which James did not do. I knew James was suffering needlessly and felt bad about it.
Mum and dad were fundamentalist Christians and as my dad had a pharmacy degree, but as a mission-hall goer, he wanted so badly for us kids to consider himself to be our doctor. All would have been well had he actually believed in laxatives and other such tablets, like Sudafed and other cold relief tablets, but he did not even though he was a pharmacist and gave them to the public. Not fair! It was obvious to me that he knew that his son had CF because sometimes he expressed devious, reclusive behaviour and also because I knew that pharmacists exist for the public in general and need to know everything about every condition that just about anyone could have. So as I was medically intimated by him anyway and as I had my own medical needs at the time as well, I decided to have a short but serious conversation with James about whether or not he knew that he had a condition, since we related abnormally, sometimes frighteningly well. I wanted to know if he ever felt ill or if he ever would like tablets to help him. He said that he knew he had a condition because he just knew and because he could relate to me so well, and he said that occasionally he felt ill. But he rejected any tablets partly because he just didn't want them, but partly because mum and dad wouldn't want him to have them. So I left it such that he knew that if he ever wanted to talk with me he could, because, apart from anything else, I didn't know what else to do. I was only 5 at the time.
I always watched how I played with James and never jumped on his back or did any such things that I was supposed to do as a child with CP who had an apparently ‘normal’ brother. Mum and dad often commended me for how I played with James, although I don't think my mum knew that James had CF until he was diagnosed when he was 12. Sometimes I got frustrated with them and told them not to commend me so much because I was just being how I was, nice, whilst at the same time I tried to create a future conversation with them on whether or not people are good by nature, good by environment or good by god, or, in other words, good intrinsically, good by conditioning or good by faith. When my mum took a parallel approach to my dad to my apparently submissive behaviour to James, I just called her in my head a fundamentalist Christian and called my dad a liar of a doctor/pharmacist who was fuelled by a fundamentalist faith. When my dad was being a friend to me, like watching TV with me or playing me at snooker or chess, I did think of him as a fundamentalist Christian, but when he wasn’t admitting to us to his medical mind, I thought of him as just a bad liar. And I was commended by James himself for being sensitive to him which rather meant something to me, coming to mean almost everything at the time.
James hit the ball to me such that it bounced at the side of the table that I was standing at, and I can't remember the exact scenario but he gently built up the game so as to inaugurate me in the game solidly. By the third day I was able to play a basic game of table tennis which I could be proud of as a disabled person of my disability because he just kept hitting the ball to where I was, enabling me to build up the skill. However, I interacted with him as well when playing the game by telling him how I felt initially after every shot, eg. whether or not I was off balance, whether or not I was having to save myself from falling to my right, for example, when I leaned over to the right, and whether or not I needed more time to feel content when I was standing whenever I was looking for the return ball. After a week of this interactivity, I shortened my informative replies to just a “Yes” or a “No” for “That shot was easy” or “That shot was hard.” He didn't have to stick to just hitting the ball back to me where I was, because I got better at it, and after 2 or so weeks he just returned the ball anywhere and just about everywhere on the table without having to think about the returns. After about 3 or 4 weeks I was a good, fitting competitor for just about anybody and certainly for James, but played down my new ability whenever mum or dad entered the room. We must have talked about me being such an actor about my physical abilities to our parents because I vaguely remember such a conversation, but James I think would’ve let me off with it, understanding that there was some distance between me and them in terms of medical right and therapy posture (I think you're in the therapist’s hands entirely rather than partly in theirs and partly in gods).
When you do sport, you can express any emotion through it because it lets you. I was relieved when James got angry on me once on the table tennis table at his CF diagnosis. I got him to become angry on me again the next time we played, and said that he could play me like that any time he wanted to. I conversed with him after his angry shots and talked to him gently throughout the games about facing illness and suffering bravely, by using short phrases instead of long sentences, as well as quietness and sometimes silence which often sounded with a knowing air of friendship. We soon got our normal game back, feeling much better for the meaningful interaction about what was happening to him at the time.
I only believed in god for 2 years of my life, between 10 and a half and 12 and a half, and that was only because James was in his last years and dying and wanted the right to talk to him at any time in his room. It wasn’t really allowed by my fundamentalist family that a brother and sister should be so close, in any way at all apart from in the childhood decision to believe in god, and my parents were very extreme fundamentalists who attended a mission. They did not endorse a Baptist or a Church of Scotland church, although they went to a Baptist church sometimes, and got it into me that they were really the property of Carrubbers Close Mission. I understood that being a Christian was the only way to befriend my brother in his death, after he was diagnosed by the Western when he was 12, and in his forthcoming objective illness.
James related to me extremely well over table tennis, to the extent that I felt completely accepted physically by someone else. I sometimes pushed him as hard as I could at the game for his sake, for his health, not for my physical disability. I knew that in later years he would become disabled by CF, not as able to move and be so sprightly. My parents sometimes didn't know when we played good games, but the amount of times they did know about were enough. They thought I was to strong, and articulated, “Rhoda, I wish you were more disabled.” But James thoroughly enjoyed the ‘active’ games, as we called them, and was neither ill in any way nor one bit perturbed afterwards. I knew I had extended his life-span, perhaps to the expected death-age of 14, and it is this that I set out to do in the first place. He didn't have a chance at living to the age of 14, the expected life-span, since dad seemed to have deliberately overlooked his disorder, disallowing him the much needed drugs and therapies.
Out for Walks
We managed to take each other out for walks, just round the block. It was really good exercise for me, and we often held hands. We didn't tell mum or dad and it was our little secret. The first time we just went a short distance, and we were both puggled, but as the sunny days and weeks went on we became stronger and more able, allowing us to ‘explore’, or view, the neighbours gardens on foot rather than just in the car. We could both eventually talk as well as walking since we had built ourselves up to do so, and talking to each other when we were out was our deliberate aim. Sometimes James took the lead in deliberately breathing, so as to improve his breathing, and sometimes I did. The one followed the other and by doing so neither of us felt lonely. We only needed to remember to breath the first five, say, times we went out, because after that we were fitter and more able, as I have just said.
I didn't push James at all, and I often went on further myself than he could, came back to where he was to go home together. We talked about mum and dad, faith and religion, the medical profession, what political party I would be voting for, what I wanted to do at Uni, what I wanted to do as a career, and on one of our last walks we talked about if I was bitter about mum and dad not being good with medical things. After a few months the weather got bad again, and the next year James had become too ill to go walking, even just around the block. So I went myself a number of times by telling him when I was going out for a walk. I made him aware of myself the first time I got back, but the fourth time I got back I just went to my room, albeit as loudly as I could without allowing mum to hear me signalling to James to tell him I was back. Mum thought she was on top of my relationship with James who was before me in private space and bedroom time since Christian fundamentalism stands on extreme sexism towards the girls in the family, drummed into them by the mother. I seemed to get round this glum posture most of the time, and had formed a rather caring, respectful bond with James secretly. I couldn't relate too often though, but I did not want to anyway as I was not exited about faith in the same way he was. We were apart but together, not apart but sometimes together.
When I got an electric wheelchair just before (I think) he died at 14, I drove it with great confidence and self-assurance because I knew already what it meant to go out for a walk. It took me into town, to Princess Street from beyond the Modern Art Gallery and back, seeing me buy Darwin myself at the age of 12 which I read 15 times, although only admitted to my parents that I had read it 7. I assured them that I had got it from school. The Origin of Species met me uniquely about life, society, culture and morality, and I have never regretted reading it, ever. Walking with James also gave me other things, like a quest for physical excellence (I then wanted to be the best I could be physically, not just academically), I wanted the right to take drugs like Sudafed, and I got from walks with James a desire to share how I was feeling about my fundamentalist family with other people, the people in my life at school. I mean, I had all those desires before, but after me and James had talked privately just between ourselves when out on walks, I knew rather than felt I could converse correctly and adequately with those nurses, teachers and school doctors so as to acquire for myself the drugs which were so problematic to my parents. James trusted me with his real feelings, which were open and craggy, not closed and celestial like they were for normal fundamentalists. It was a saying in the Monihan house, “My closed mind,” which my dad firstly stated as “My fundamentalist closed mind.” Dad only used this phrase for just under a year at the time when it pertained to our spiritual growth and development, though, but I remember the phrase without question.
Snooker and Billiards
About 6 months after dad bought James a table tennis table he bought a snooker table for him which was large enough to play on but small enough to sit on the dining room table, like the table tennis table. It was kept in the study with the table tennis table but it transpired that it came out much, much more, and latterly just before James took really ill, all the time. I managed to play not with the cue but by using the left side of my right hand to sweep the cue ball purposefully. I got quite good at it too, sometimes beating James. But after some weeks stopped playing as I wasn’t happy to be playing so abnormally. But I got jealous of James using the cue as I had watched him with it, so I decided to try and use one myself. It took enormous effort, but I did so and was encouraged by James to do so, who didn't overreact or praise me too much, which is sometimes what mum and dad did.
So I practised every day, twice or thrice, getting better and better, until one day having been beating James everyday for some time, got a break of 147! I was delighted, amazed and over the moon, as was James. He told mum who didn't believe us, so we just left it at that. I got 147 the next day as well , and then the next, 3 times. I then played a game myself when James was in his bedroom and got that score again and again, about 6 more times! But mum was making my life a misery for me because she thought I was lying about getting a break of 147, so I decided from then on to play what I chose to call an ‘interactive’ game of snooker since I wanted to know James on the snooker table as well as just talking in his room to allow him to enjoy the little health and well-being he had. This interactive game annoyed mum and dad still, but I didn't care since that was the deal. So I acted somewhat, as if I couldn't get 147, although played dad after about a week of declaring my 147 break to mum such that they would believe us about it. After playing him and getting 147 he said sorry and withdrew for a few days, but that was all that happened about it as nothing was said about the breaks after that. I decided to keep playing after James died because it was so good for my fitness.
I told some of the boys at school I got 147, inferring just once, but they didn't believe me, which proved to be a massive problem for me in the future. I had got so good at it by using my mind to work out the deflection angles after the ball(s) had bounced off the cushion, the cue ball and all the other balls involved as well, taking as much time as the disability meme allowed me to take, initially. I avidly played billiards which helped me with my deflections and nurtured my mind for snookers, which I was keen on, and had my dad as a thrice a day billiards partner since he had asked me what I had wanted as he also hadn’t believed I could use a cue at the start of playing snooker when I'd been using one for days. When he was ordered by James to observe me and saw me using a cue, he said “Sorry” and then offered me whatever I wanted to ask him for. So I said I wanted him, not James, although he did sometimes, to play me at billiards, whenever I wanted him to, within reason, to make up for what he had said.
I knew my snooker game would improve as a result of him ‘making amends’ as he put it, as a result of him being willing to make me happy, and I played him constantly until even he said “No Rhoda, I'm not playing another game!” He did, but not very many. By then I had got the gist of snookering and long-shots which meant that I became known for snookering people. I even played Colin Peckham, James’s best friend who was by all descriptions dangerously enormous for any age, let alone for his age. Snooker and even billiards let me express myself whatever mood I was in and however I felt, whether I was angry, glad, happy or ambitious. James used to tell me how I was feeling by how I played snooker or billiards with him, and dad used to get angry at my ability to express myself on the snooker table so well since it had nothing to do with god. But that was partly why I liked it, which I told dad at the time.
Anyway, after James died I needed to find a new snooker partner so I left the conversation deliberately for my dad to initiate with me since it was very important to me. At the end of the first game me and dad played after James’s death, I said that I'd prefer to play him on a Saturday afternoon because I had homework to do during the week - on a Sunday we went out to church and I was forbidden to play any game or enjoy any entertainment on a Sunday, even TV! But he told me that he wouldn't play on a Saturday afternoon since he would always be busy finding music and writing sermons for the Saturday Night Meeting at Carrubbers Close Mission, a large mission hall on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. It's now a Christian centre, but that doesn't make me like it any more. I cried once openly about dad not being willing to play snooker with me, and as I was told off for crying really quite sharply, cried and cried to myself for days after. It made me scared of what they would do with my snooker table in a few months time, because I suspected they’d get rid of it.
When James saw when he was alive after a few days of me playing snooker with a cue that I was able to play with a cue, he said that the table was mine and not his. So I said maybe, and started being the one, and not James, who would ask for it to be put up onto the dining room table. Mum quickly reprimanded me for being haughty, but James said “No, it's hers,” she can play with a cue. Because they didn't believe us I just told James or made him aware of when I wanted it put up, and he would ask for it to be put up as his health had deteriorated by that time to the extent that he couldn't help dad cart it from the study into the dining room, heaving it onto the table. When I got 147, one of the first things he exclaimed was “Rhoda, it's yours”. He said “Never mind what mum and dad say, it's yours from now on”. So from that point on I thought of it as mine and not his, which gave me a quiet confidence when I was talking.
A few months after James died mum and dad decided to ask me if they could give the table away to people who really need it, but I thought that was just arrogant because I really needed it for fitness, concentration, game play and eye focus. I really enjoyed it and had worked hard at it, and thought about it at night before I slept, so obviously wanted to keep it. I tried to say “No, no, no”, but they wouldn't have it, and wouldn't even entertain my point of view. I was angry and alone, and decided to go to wherever it was to be taken and have one last play on it myself by explaining to those it was given to who I was, why James had given it to me and why my parents didn't know it was mine. They gave it to my school, so I did not need to somehow make such a journey, make such an explanation and suffer from not being able to play on my table ever again.
However, all my hopes of playing daily were dashed as things did not go my way. My school only had junior kids snooker tables at which were really rickety and unstable as they lay on low lunch tables which were too low for me to play snooker on. So they didn't know I could play it with a cue, only with my hand. I decided to be brave and pluck up the courage to express my ‘new’ (to them) skill the first day that they got my table from my parents. I walked in the school front door in the morning and sure enough, just like any other day, my usual auxiliary nurse (carer) ran down the corridor to meet me to take my jacket off for me, after which I immediately went as fast as I could, which was not that fast, to the gym which was near, where the snooker table was, in order to play snooker with either one out of two of the boys I sometimes talked to in my class. I was at the gym door and had just put a great big smile on my face at the sight of the snooker table when the auxiliary nurse pulled me with her two hands back such that I almost fell backward, and sternly said, “Now madam, you're not going in there!” I was devastated, because apart from anything else it wasn’t good to be reprimanded at my school, really reprimanded, by an auxiliary nurse, who were insanely thought to be inversely important because they were considered close to you if they helped you every day. I was displeased, and she knew it, and even hinted at a polite reversal.
I don't think they ever worked out what was wrong with me in the next few weeks, and I think they should’ve, because the pain of being disallowed to play snooker on my table was extreme. I didn't appreciate it, like it, nor suffer it well, and went quiet sometimes. They were so forceful about believing that they knew what my behaviour was like at home with James, who had a condition just like me, and they were so forceful about believing that they knew what my behaviour was like at home with fundamentalist parents, who thought they knew best for us kids, better than the NHS and school doctors and nurses. They thought there was a distance between me and James and they thought I accepted my parents point of view and faith, but I entered into life as much as I could, which as a result meant that me and James sometimes had our own little world together. I don't know why I didn't tell the school doctor on the auxiliary nurse, but I think I should’ve. When I was 16 I said to the school doctor that I wanted to play snooker with his occupational therapist because I used to play it with James. So I did, and although it was only once, all the staff were better towards me. And I'm glad I did.
My Exercise Bike
Yet again, they bought the exercise bike for James. It was after he had downed a set of tablets 4 times a day for about 5 months and after he’d had physiotherapy on his chest also 4 times a day, also for 5 months. And he’d been in hospital for 2 weeks in the middle of it. Mum insisted on buying James an exercise bike to make him as good as he could be, his health, well-being and fitness and all that, so dad bought him a white and orange bike for just £50. They placed it in his physiotherapy room, insisting that he used it as much as he possibly could. I felt as if they were hinting that it would compensate for the 10 or so long years James had suffered without benefiting from any drugs, therapy or without having had the security of a doctor who would have been concerned about him. He would have been under an NHS hospital rather than under our dad who’s faith more often than not barred him from implementing his medical doctorate on his family. So when they demanded that James go on the bike for half an hour twice a day, I immediately said “Maybe just once a day,” to which James immediately added “And maybe just for 20 minutes.” So after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing James was to do 20 minutes on the exercise bike every day, but he looked at me straight after the dialogue as if he was in pain, so I talked to him secretly about how he felt about it, if he thought he would manage it. He said no, and was sure he could not. So I promised that if he did it the first time, and maybe twice after that, I would do it for him behind their back, since we would insist that mum (and dad when he was at home like on a Saturday and Sunday) removed herself from the room until the 20 minutes were up. From the kitchen they could hear the exercise bikes wheel turning.
To me, my parents needed to know that it was not normal at that time, in 1982/3, for kids with CF, who by the time they were 12 were thought to be dying as they were in the last few years of their life. It was not normal for them to be doing exercises so effortfully, and that it was really hard for them to be doing any such activities. So mum stayed in the room the first time becoming really angry and really quite aggressive towards James for complaining and saying he could not go on so much. He told her he didn't like it, hated it, and wished he was dead, but she just ignored him saying “Tomorrow will be better.” He ordered her out the room the next day when the time came from him to go on the bike, and it took some emotion to free us of her, but he eventually managed to, which allowed us to discuss what was about to happen. He complained again profusely but she replied “No, no, no, James, you're just not sane!” So the next day he wanted me to do it for him but I refused saying that I'd do it tomorrow. He cried hard afterwards when mum returned and was sweating as well as dangerously out of breath just like he had been the two previous days. But not once did she relent, although he had bartered that he’d do it for 15 minutes. So I did it instead of him from that point on. We both exclaimed to them that if the doctor didn't say he should do it then James said he didn't need to and I proffered that he shouldn't. They hated me with their teeth for the absolute validation of ordinary medical doctors which I upheld when I admitted that I trusted them “with all my heart”. That's what you were supposed to do with Jesus, so I did what I always waned to do which was to say no to Jesus to them and yes to medical doctors, which obviously said no as well to my dad’s medical mind.
I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise bike and at the start did it twice a day sometimes, which was once according to our parents. However, I was also playing snooker and billiards, table tennis, going out on (short to most people) walks with James, still going swimming at school and had just got a footswitch which I was to operate my typewriter with since I couldn't write or type with my hands. Or so they thought. I had been a home gamer and programmer from the age of 7 behind their back when my dad bought James a ZX Spectrum, which as you can guess became entirely mine after only a week. Then when I was 10 he yet again insisted on getting James and not me a BBC Computer model B, which like the Spectrum James helped me use at the start but which I soon managed to get my hands around using a keyguard that helped me typed. I got it from my maths teacher and took it home with me. I was very happy to type with my hands so the footswitch was a downer even though it was easier. Anyway, it had massive big springs on it to counteract the leg spasms which I was supposed to be having when using it, but after 5 minutes of use I found that I didn't have any abnormal leg spasms and so didn't need that footswitch any more but required another footswitch which was free from springs. My parents said no way and not to even think about asking the CALL Centre, who had made or acquired it for me, for a newer one. Along with all the sports I was doing, found it incredibly hard to use, which meant that I lost an awful amount of weight in a very short period of time, and was told by the school doctor that I had the weight loss disorder that you get from loosing weight too quickly. He asked why, and I don't recall what I said, but he forced me to eat two lunches sometimes.
I really, really enjoyed using the exercise bike and so got back to it quite quickly after James died since, of course, he had called it mine to me. Mum and dad said because I used it so often so soon after his death that I was sick in the head etc., but I knew that I was not. They have a real problem with death anyway since Christians are guilty of upholding and sometimes contending that Jesus is alive when he is dead, to me dead quite simply and quite overtly. Jesus was a doctor to do with disability and so was called god as it was a taboo subject at the time, and he’s dangerously been taken out of context. So if you do something with his death, like say that he rose from the dead and is alive today, I think you become mentally ill and a psychiatric case, instead of edified and wise. Christians can be so sentimental at times, and my parents were certainly guilty of that. I dealt with James’s actual death very well but the religion surrounding it very badly, so was tethered by my parents as well as by the church to living the Christian life as you should. I could only insist that I wasn’t insane or cold, not respecting James’s death. According to my auxiliary nurse at school, I was taking the piss, so I only really used the exercise bike when my mum was at the neighbours, leaving me more often than not in on my own as opposed to in with my dad. I looked forward to the time when I would stay in on my own in the evenings, which came when I was an old 13. I then rode the bike as often as I wanted, without psychiatric observation or criticism.
But things got hard for me because I became careless about my new freedom, riding it whenever I wanted whether they were in or out. So I asked to use the one in physiotherapy at school instead sometimes. The physio referred me to the school doctor about the matter but the duty room, who would get him to talk to me if they also thought it would be a good idea, didn't understand my predicament and it felt like they were going head to head with me about the functions of a parent as they understood neither why I wanted to go out with my family for exercise nor why, as a disabled person, I wanted to do exercises to myself in that way, by exercising, at all rather than with a physio or supervisor. They always insisted my parents were fully functional since my parents were Christian because the Sister in charge appeared quite religious herself. I just claimed insanity which gave me my request to the doctor, who little beknown to them my mum had forbidden me to see if I did not call him by his proper name, which nobody at all did. He granted me my request with a question but without hesitation, so I felt fully accepted by him.
I thoroughly enjoyed using the bike in the days and months ahead, but the other kids found me strange for having physical aspirations and not just academic ones. It was normal for us to be pushed physically by a therapist with her/him as the initiator of the relationship, not the one who allows it. All the other pupils believed in god for physiotherapy/occupational therapy, in Jesus as their friend when they were doing it, thinking of him when they were being pushed by such a therapist, or so I concluded from what the headmaster said and how he came over in assembly. So I just said that I didn't believe in god and was an atheist, which they instantly understood. I used the bike after lunch whenever I wanted to until the time I left school at 17, and the bother and hassle in acquiring it was well worth it.
Wheelchair Dancing
When you moved from junior school to senior school you were offered wheelchair dancing as an activity if you wanted to do it in the evenings on a Monday. I needed to take up a new sport, my own sport, since James was dying and wasn’t sure who I'd play snooker and table tennis with, and whether or not my parents would let my use what was supposedly his exercise bike as often as I would like to use it. So I took up wheelchair dancing, but found it really hard to keep up with the others because I pushed my manual wheelchair myself with both hands, but mainly with my left hand, and with both legs, mainly with my left. I immediately spoke to the school doctor about the difficulties I was having with my right foot, and he gave me physio which allowed me to use my right foot more ably as well as my left after about 6 lessons. The team rejected me as a lost cause until then, when I proved to be as fast and accurate as any other team member. They nodded at me after some of the dances, different members, one by one, which I duly accepted and smiled back once.
We did Scottish Country Dancing and pop, songs like Every Breath you Take and Hey Jude. After a year and a half of it, I won the Individual Team Medal in Aberdeen at the championships, and my team won the Team Medal for our category. I came home with two medals, which I was happy about. However, I stopped dancing after the competition because someone on the other team upset me on the competition weekend away.
Conclusion
I very much enjoyed going swimming, playing table tennis, snooker and billiards, going out on walks, using the exercise bike and doing wheelchair dancing. I think the real problem with my parents was a basic objection to the fact that sport and exercise are enjoyable, likeable naturally, which implies that people are self-satisfied in they you don't need god. They called my natural liking of sport and the physical “distasteful,” as they were supposed to be, according to them, committed to god by yourself in an act of prayer, once. You were supposed to give god the physical, and because I never gave my physical body to god, having it so blessed by him, there was always a distance between me and them about the sports I did. I didn't enjoy church, and wasn’t ever bothered. James related to me well through sports until I was almost a teenager, when I related to the school doctor about them.
Atheism is indeed physical, never ignoring it nor shutting it out as irrelevant or cold. Atheism accounts for modern society and frees you into doing exactly what you want to do, which will, more often than not, be physical or respective of - to do with, the physical. It may seem to some of you as if I may been exaggerating a bit sometimes, playing almost normal games of table tennis and getting 147 at snooker, but when you are determined to do something because you want to, you find that you can do it and get better and better at it by practise. Nothing should hold you back, and nothing should scare you because there’s always ways around the difficulties and there’s always other methods of doing things. Sports is for you, because sports is for everyone. You can just do a little, or you can do lots. Whatever you want really. But make sure that if you want to do sports that you don't let anybody put you off for any reason: insanity, in terms of how you claim you do your games or activities (I was using a snooker cue rather than my right hand); insanity in terms of what scores you've got; personal embarrassment; or potential humiliation by a group, like a school or community (like the other kids at my disabled school). Do them for you, because sport and exercise are for you, only you, and not for anybody else. They pertain to you and will improve your health and happiness.
Through sports and exercise you meet people you never expected and go to another level with those that you know who you do sports with. It is a level that is very often magical, and often was for me and James. I don't believe in C S Lewis metaphor of Aslan (the lion) for Jesus, who took the kids in the film Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to another level when they went through a wardrobe into another world, a world which was timeless. Lewis was suggesting this can happen to anyone when they have faith and belief. You can say through a wardrobe, or you can say through sports and exercises, because fashion in Lewis’s day was what sports and exercises are today - the thing which we should be concerned with and focus on sometimes as it's what everybody talks about.
I'm afraid I've found that fundamentalism has a catholic angle to it as it often asks you to go against the physical, albeit not in the same way as what we see in films such as the Da Vinche Code, and this can hurt us emotionally and psychologically just as much as physical. I think such self-punishment is called the “mortification of the flesh.” Teachers need to be more aware of kids from fundamentalist households who do not want to partake in their parents prayers and ceremonies because they are atheists, whether it be quietly or overtly. Sports and exercise celebrate the physical body, bolster your confidence and give you relationships that you never thought you would have. They remind you of your relationality with another people, and put you in your place when you become arrogant. You'll never lose by becoming more active, so you may as well if you ask me. You can express yourself by sports, freely and vibrantly without intimidation because doing sports just means that you can do the best you can, that's all. Nothing else. An event and a problem is church, not sports. Never sports or exercise. For anyone. As some fundamentalist Christians say “Whosoever will may come.”