This week we continue reminiscing about my high school days traveling back and forth between a special education school and my regular neighborhood high school. I tell the tale of my friendship with a girl in my senior year.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 28 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue reminiscing about my high school experiences attending a special education school and my neighborhood regular school Northwest High School. We are going to start off with a story from my senior year.

During my sophomore and junior years, I attended RobertsSchool for the Handicapped in the mornings and Northwest High School in the afternoon. However, this being my senior year, there were things that went on during the homeroom period that were important for seniors. There would be information about senior photos, class rings, renting your cap and gown, and other important information. The homeroom period was a short 15-minute period wedged between the third and fourth periods. Freshman through junior classes were assigned homeroom in various classrooms but for seniors, we all gathered in the cafeteria so they could make the same announcements to all of us.

So we reversed the schedule. I would take physics with Mr. Irwin during the first two periods with a lab during the second period every other day. I would then do English during third period followed by homeroom. Then my mom would pick me up and take me to Roberts for lunch, social studies, calculus, and typing. Then I would ride the bus home from Roberts at the end of the day.

I would arrive each morning at Northwest about 20-25 minutes before my first class. Students arriving early were not allowed to wander the halls. We were supposed to gather in the main lobby until a bell rang 10 minutes before the first class. Only then were you allowed to go to your locker or go upstairs. I never had a locker assigned to me at Northwest. I just carried my books in a bag on the back of my wheelchair. I wouldn’t have been able to operate the locker and I didn’t need it. I could also hang my coat on the back of my chair.

The bus would drop me off outside the music wing and I would proceed straight to the lobby. While there, waiting on classes to begin, I met a girl.

I was going to tell you the story of my friendship with her but I’ve already written that story three times as an assignment for the online writing seminar I’ve been attending for nearly a year. That program is presented by Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Gerrold. He got his start as a science fiction writer when he wrote the script for the famous Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”. He also worked on the television series “Land of the Lost”, and the first season of “Star Trek: Next Generation”.

One of our writing assignments for David’s program was to write a scene or a small story using three different tenses. I begin by writing the story of my friendship with that girl in first person past tense. That’s the form I find most natural as a blogger, podcaster, and author of autobiographical magazine articles. In first person past tense, I’m telling you the story of something that happened in the past. That’s what I’ve been doing throughout this podcast. David noted that writing in the second person present tense is very rare for most fiction. However, it is the way you write a script or a screenplay. You are describing the action as it’s happening. I’d never attempted to write a script or screenplay so I decided to give that a try as part two of the assignment. For part three, I wrote third person past tense as if an omniscient outside observer is telling the story . The problem with that when telling a two-story (or let’s say mostly true) is that you have to figure out what the other person was thinking or feeling. In this instance, I didn’t have any idea how she experienced the events.

I’m going to read you the first person present tense version of the story. It’s my account of the story and although I have somewhat dramatized it, the basic facts are true. On my webpage for this podcast, I will include the second person script as well as the third person account. The third person version is highly fictionalized because I’m speculating about her thoughts, motives, and feelings.

So without further ado, here is my 99% true story that I call “A Hunting Melody”.

According to the song by Irving Berlin, “A pretty girl is like a melody that haunts you night and day.” In this case, the inverse was not true. No boy in the high school would’ve described Melody as a pretty girl. Still, the memory of my brief friendship with her haunts me 50 years later.

It was early in my senior year of high school when I met her. The wheelchair bus from the special education school dropped me off at the regular neighborhood high school each morning about 20 minutes before my first class. Students arriving early were sequestered in the main lobby until the bell rang five minutes before the first class. Only then could you proceed through the rest of the building to go to your locker or your first-period classroom.

I would park my motorized wheelchair with my back to the wall of the lobby out of the way of the traffic of students gathering there. Most days I would blankly stare into space trying to wake up or I would engage in some girl-watching.

One day I noticed a young girl sitting on the steps across from me waiting for the bell to ring. We made brief eye contact and then both quickly turned away, each hoping that the other did not notice that we were looking. Peripheral vision is not very good at a distance of about 40 feet so the only way to see what the other person was doing was to look directly at them.

After several failed attempts to not catch each other looking, she stood up and started walking across the lobby toward me. Oh shit! She’s coming over to talk to me. What the fuck do I do now?

Her face featured bushy unkept eyebrows and lacked any positive features such as dimples or freckles that might have made the word “cute” applicable. She wore no makeup or jewelry. She had frizzy, shoulder-length, deep brown, naturally wavy hair pulled back from her face by a pink plastic headband. Her fuzzy pink sweater had barely perceptible curves where her breasts were. A plaid wool skirt that ended just above her knobby knees somehow managed to stay up despite the lack of any apparent curvature of her hips. Her white bobby socks and penny loafers did nothing to enhance the appearance of her legs.

With the hindsight of 50 years of perspective, I could accurately characterize her as exceedingly plain and homely. To my much less generous 17-year-old eyes she was just plain ugly.

I was anticipating the usual litany of questions about why I was in a wheelchair. I’ve always tried to be generous with my explanations. Many of my disabled friends responded to such queries with sarcasm and a huge chip on their shoulder. I always felt that attitude widened the gap between us and the larger community which was often ill-equipped to know what to think about us. People are genuinely curious even though they often express such curiosity with cringe-worthy condescension. Why confirm their fears with a snarky attitude?

“Do you need any help getting to your first class?” she inquired in a genuine tone of concern and helpfulness. It lacked the typical tone that implied, “You poor helpless thing… what can I do to ease your suffering in your horrible condition?”

Less than a second after she offered to help, the bell rang. I quickly responded, “No, I can get around on my own thanks.” I sped off in my power chair to my physics class, thereby escaping in a demonstration of my mobility. My only thought was how literally the phrase, “Saved by the bell” applied to the incident.

As I feared, the next day I was not so fortunate. Immediately upon my arrival, she crossed the lobby from her usual position sitting on the stairs and began engaging in small talk.

I learned her name was Melody. She was a 14-year-old freshman. I never knew if my status as a 17-year-old senior was a plus or minus in her calculations.

“What class do you have first period?” she asked.

“Senior physics,” I replied.

“Ewe… science is my worst subject. I just can’t get interested in it.”

Well, cross that off as a possible common interest. I could tutor her but if she doesn’t care about science I’m not wasting my time on her.

Sensing the kind and sincere person she was I suggested, “Yesterday, you asked if I needed help getting to class. I do have one thing you could do. I need help getting my coat off.” She accepted immediately and followed my directions carefully on how to extract me from my coat.

Having survived our second encounter without too much awkwardness, I didn’t approach the next day with the same level of dread. This time upon seeing me enter the lobby, she sprinted across the room sporting a broad smile expressing an eagerness to see me. She quickly proceeded to help me with my coat and exuded great joy at the accomplishment.

Holy shit this ugly freshman chick has a crush on me!

Careful not to give her any encouragement, I continued to engage in small talk. She complimented me on how smart I must be to take calculus and physics. Other than that and her daily enthusiasm to see me, I didn’t sense any more worrisome infatuation.

A few weeks into the relationship, I don’t recall if we were talking about Halloween or Thanksgiving when she explained her family doesn’t celebrate any holidays because they are Jehovah’s Witnesses. This includes not celebrating religious holidays such as Christmas or Easter as well as birthdays and other anniversaries. When I said I was Roman Catholic she didn’t say much but the expression on her face spoke, “Well… Nobody’s perfect.”

The religious revelation began to put pieces of the puzzle together. Her timidity, lack of self-confidence, and absence of fashion sense, makeup, or jewelry took on new meaning in the light of her restrictive, conservative religious upbringing.

I was already struggling with doubts as to why I continued to participate in the Catholic Church which seemed to lack relevance in my life. I was beginning to think that any faith was at odds with my rational, scientific mind. Being only marginally tolerant of my own religious traditions I found it hard to be sympathetic towards her faith that I felt to be so repressive of self.

I eventually found the courage to tell my disabled friends about Melody.

Because the high school had no elevator, it was impossible for me to take math or social studies classes upstairs. Each day at noon, my mother drove me across town to the special education high school where I would take classes that were inaccessible to me in the neighborhood high school. The wheelchair bus then brought me home each afternoon.

My friends at the special education school looked up to me in the same way small-town folks admire someone who escaped the tedium of a dead-end existence. Having no idea what it was like to attend pep rallies, homecoming festivities, and other extracurricular activities some of my buddies lived vicariously through the details I brought them.

When I revealed that a freshman girl seemed to be infatuated with me, they immediately asked, “Is she hot?”

“Unfortunately no. Quite the opposite.”

“How bad can it be?”

When I described her to them, they sought to help me salvage the situation with the advice, “Maybe she’s got good-looking friends she can introduce you to.” Another friend noted, “Yeah… The hot chicks sometimes hang out with the ugly ones so they look even better by comparison.”

I’m embarrassed to admit, that I took their advice and asked one of her better-looking friends for a phone number. Worst of all, I did so in front of Melody. I struck out multiple times.

Gradually, I began to enjoy the simple pleasure of my daily conversations with Melody. Just as I was beginning to appreciate her friendship, fate (or was it karma?) removed her from my life. When the spring semester began, our class schedules changed. She didn’t have a first-period class and so she could stay home an extra hour. She explained it didn’t make sense to come in early just to sit in the study hall.

I suggested perhaps we could meet at a school event. I knew better than to think her parents would let her go on a date with me or meet me at a school dance. Perhaps she could come to a basketball game and we could sit together. She said her parents would never allow her to go alone and definitely not with a boy. We had already established the fact that phone calls were out of the question.

Throughout the remainder of my final semester, I would occasionally see her between classes and we would smile and wave but we didn’t have time to talk as we rushed between classes.

At age 17, hormones, social conditioning, and a dogged determination not to lower my expectations in the face of my disability all conspired to blind me to the unimportance of physical appearance in a meaningful relationship. In the decades since then, I’ve beat myself up considerably for my selfish, cavalier, and disrespectful attitude toward her. I still carry her photo in my wallet lest I forget the lessons learned.

Multiple Google searches and Facebook searches have turned up many Melodys with her last name but none were her. Should such searches someday yield results, all I want to do is apologize for how poorly I treated her. At age 68, that apology occupies a prominent position on my bucket list.

Irving Berlin concludes his song with the words, “She will leave you and then come back again, A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.” However apparently, when you fail to recognize her beauty, fate conspires that she doesn’t return. But the memories and the regrets linger forever.

So, that’s the story of what a jerk I was when I was 17 years old. I described it as 99% true. I think in real life, she didn’t take off my coat until about the third or fourth day. Also, I’m not really as haunted by the story as I let on. I do regret how I behaved and I would apologize to her should I ever see her again. But, I would hardly call it a bucket list item. Attempts to locate her on Facebook have been unsuccessful.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the screenplay version and the third person version are much more fictionalized by their very nature. I’m not going to read those here but you can find them on the Contemplating Life website.

Next week, I’ll discuss more events of my senior year. As I teased at the end of the previous episode upcoming topics include: the senior prom, another town hall meeting, and more stories about my mentor Mr. Irwin. I will go on actual dates with (spoiler redaction). And I’ll relive the joys and fears of graduation.

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In this week’s episode, I talk about the reaction to my article “The Reunion” and the awards that it won.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 23 of Contemplating Life.

Last week I read for you my award-winning article “The Reunion”. This week I’m going to talk about what happened afterward.

Somewhere along the way, I got in touch again with Rose and told her I had written a magazine article about the reunion that featured her prominently. After the magazine came out I talked to her by phone. She was extremely flattered by the things I said about her. I specifically remember she said, “Nobody ever described me that way.” That was a bit embarrassing for me to think I had perhaps been more flattering to her than her husband had ever been.

She said she wanted to keep in touch. She insisted we still could be good friends. I agreed to keep in contact but I knew that I wouldn’t. The reunion event had been very emotional for me. I wrote about it to get those emotions resolved and to put it all behind me. That was one of the reasons that I was reluctant to go to the trouble of trying to get it published. Now that it was published, again, I wanted to put everything behind me. I knew that if I stayed in contact with Rose it would just be another way to revisit things that I needed to leave behind.

That phone conversation we had after the magazine came out was the last I spoke with her. As I said two episodes ago, I later heard that she had a baby. And many years later, Google searches told me when she had died. I don’t think I left anything unsaid between us so although we didn’t exactly say goodbye forever, I’m at peace about it at least as much as possible.

Occasionally she appears in my dreams. In the dreams, I’m out somewhere shopping or something and run into her. Sometimes in the dreams, she has left her husband and I try to restart our relationship. But it never goes anywhere. Sometimes in the dreams, I see her in a crowd and try to get to talk to her but never get there. She slips away.

I got a note from the Gilson family. Their brother thanked me for remembering them so fondly. He said he didn’t recall the events described to me by my teacher Mr. Kohl about the events surrounding Leslie passing. As I said in the earlier episode, in some ways, it doesn’t matter if it was true or not. When the legend becomes fact… print the legend.

In the list of people who were not at the reunion, I mentioned the janitor John Sementa. I described him as “whereabouts unknown”. He called me to say, “I’m right here” and laughed a hearty laugh. He had been at the reunion and I didn’t see him.

Over the years I’ve tried Facebook searches and Google searches for other people from Roberts with whom I’ve lost touch. I found an obituary for my buddy Estel. Also found one for Carl Nash. He was the guy I mentioned that I had run into him several times over the years and he always asked, “Aren’t you dead yet?” That was his backhanded way of saying he was glad I was still alive and beat the odds. I think it is supremely ironic that I outlived him. He was married to a Roberts alum named Mary, I forget her main name now. They lived in the small town of Bargersville about 30 miles south of here. Rosie lived in the same duplex. Her husband was Carl’s nephew.

I mentioned a girl Cheryl Fayette whom I took to the senior prom. She will get an episode of her own soon.

Music and home economics teacher Betty Atkins wrote me to say how flattered she was by the article. She said something to the effect that she was surprised when any of her students remembered her at all. She had no idea the impact she had on me and was grateful to hear my story.

I heard from Mr. Kohl. We had a nice conversation and I mailed him the original unabridged version of the story. I think it was a bit shocking to him to see things that we discussed appear in print. Still, he was very gracious and grateful. Years later he was cleaning out some files and mailed me back that unabridged version of the story. It was a good thing he did because I’m not sure I have a copy of that version anymore. During this podcast, I went looking for it and other memorabilia such as a poem that Nancy Gilson had written. I still haven’t found either of them. If I ever do, I will post it on the website and make mention of it here.

A couple of issues after “The Reunion” appeared in Indianapolis Monthly Magazine they printed letters to the editor praising the article.

My friends and family of course were quite proud of me. I also heard from some people I hadn’t heard from in years. My former next-door neighbor Syd dropped by just to tell me how much he enjoyed the article. He said he felt privileged to know me.

A guy named Fred who was a good friend of my aunt and uncle was deeply affected by the story. Fred had suffered severe burns on the side of his face and head when he was young. You can still see scars on the side of his face and his ear. He always wore a toupee to cover the scars on his head. My aunt Jody told me after he read the article, they were on vacation together and while swimming he took off his toupee – something she had never seen him do before. She told me she thought that after reading my story he found the courage to show who he really was.

One of the reasons they were reluctant to publish my story was because they “never publish anything written in first person.” That’s not exactly true. Editor Deborah Paul wrote a first-person article about her life every month. That’s what made me think they would be open to what I wrote. She wrote over 400 such personal reflections every month until her retirement in 2017. Anyway, after my first-person article appeared, they continued to publish other first-person pieces although I suspect some of them may have been ghostwritten by staff members after interviewing the subject of the article.

A few months later I got a call from Ms. Paul telling me that we, emphasis on we, had won an award. An organization called the Community Service Council of Central Indiana annually presented its CASPER award. That is Community Appreciation in Public Enrichment and Relations. The CSC was an organization that did planning for social service activities in the city. They had a very prestigious Board of Directors consisting of politicians and business people who are the movers and shakers of the city.

I recall my mother and I attended one of their meetings as part of our disability advocacy work. I don’t think she ever served on the Council itself. My friend Muriel Lee, mother of Christopher Lee who I spoke about a few episodes ago in my Tech Expo presentation had received a CASPER award.

Anyway, the CSC found five articles in Indianapolis Monthly Magazine that they thought were worthy of their prestigious CASPER award. Although they gave out 2 or 3 such awards each year, they didn’t want to give 5 of them to one publication. They concluded that it was Ms. Paul’s leadership as Editor that produced these works so they gave her the award. In some ways, it was shared between me, another freelance writer, and a couple of staff members for recognition of our work but in the end, the single award ended up hanging in Ms. Paul’s office.

I was invited to the luncheon where the award was presented. Photos were taken. Applause given. It was a really nice affair and my mom and I really enjoyed it because we knew many of the people involved in social service activities.

A short time later, I got a call that I had won an award. Emphasis on “I”, not we.

“The Reunion” had been awarded first place as Best Magazine Feature by the Society of Professional Journalists – Sigma Delta Chi. This award was going to me for my article. Naturally, the magazine was proud but this one was mine and mine alone.

There was a fancy reception at the downtown Indianapolis Athletic Club. Cocktails were served. The room was packed full of journalists. I dressed up in my only suit and tie. Mom and Dad accompanied me dressed in their best.

Ms. Paul and other people from the Magazine were there. I asked one of them, “Are the people in this room the ones who voted for me?”

“Many of the members of the Journalist Society are here and it’s their award but technically no… They didn’t vote. So that there is no conflict of interest, we trade with other states. We send them our nominations and they pick the winners. We get their nominated stories and we vote on them. I think this year we traded with Iowa.”

The guest speaker for the evening was independent presidential candidate Lenora Fulani of the New Alliance Party. Her 1988 presidential campaign made her the first woman and first African-American woman to appear on the ballot in all 50 states. She earned approximately 0.2% of the national vote.

After her stump speech, they opened the floor to questions. After 3 or 4 questions were asked by journalists in the audience, I decided to ask her one. After all, in a few minutes, I would be an award-winning journalist. That year, Reverend Jesse Jackson was running for the Democratic Nomination and although no one thought he had much of a chance, the field was still wide open after the Gary Hart scandal. Jackson certainly had a better chance than this independent candidate that few people ever heard of. I don’t recall if I had Mom or Dad raise their hand on my behalf or had them raise my hand but at any rate, I got called on. I asked her, “If Rev. Jackson would receive the Democratic Party Nomination, would you consider accepting an invitation from him to be his vice presidential running mate.” I thought it was a brilliant question and it may have been by imagination but I thought I saw smiles from some of the journalists on the dais.

In typical political form, she sort of dodged the question saying that she was focusing on her campaign yet wished Reverend Jackson well.

In addition to magazine awards, I believe there were also newspaper and TV/radio awards given. In my category, there were first, second, and third-place awards of which I got first. I beat out a couple of pretty big stories. The presenter, I don’t recall who it was, gave a two or three-sentence description of the winning stories.

One of the stories I beat was a feature about Ryan White. He was an Indiana high school student who came to national attention in his struggle to continue to attend school after he contracted AIDS. He had hemophilia and had contracted the disease through blood transfusions. He was a real celebrity who attracted the attention of other celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Elton John. His story was one of the biggest stories in the state that year and attracted much national attention.

The other story was about a military plane that crashed into a Ramada Inn hotel near the Indianapolis airport. That was also a major national news story.

I never had the opportunity to read the other two award-winning feature stories. However, given the enormity and emotional impact those stories must’ve had, I’m amazed and flattered that my simple memoir of a class reunion came out on top.

I took home a very nice engraved brass plaque that has been on my wall for years. Well, actually I took it down the last time we painted a few years ago and I haven’t had a chance to put it back up again. But I very much treasure it. You can see a photo of the award in the YouTube version of this podcast. I took some photos the day of the award that I will also include but for some reason, they turned out very fuzzy. I think they needed flash and the exposure was too long.

The magazine published a sidebar piece about me and about Muscular Dystrophy. At the time, I had not yet been diagnosed as having SMA. The piece quotes local MD researcher Dr. Charles Bonsett but much of what he says, while accurate about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, doesn’t apply to me because that’s not what I have.

While “The Reunion” contains some outdated language such as using “handicap” instead of “disability”, the sidebar written by a magazine staff writer is full of language that today would be considered blatantly ablest.

The title of the piece is “Life Sentence” with the subtitle, “Muscular dystrophy’s slow, steady progression disables the body but not the mind.” The opening paragraph is…

“For lifelong neuromuscular disease sufferer Chris Young, muscular dystrophy is a silent predator. ‘Your muscles are its prey,’ he says, ‘You feel weak, but you learn to cope. Then one day something sudden happens that you can’t move anymore. MD is a terrible disease because you can’t fight it, you just have to adjust.’”

By today’s standards, that is wall-to-wall cringe-worthy. I don’t doubt that they quoted me accurately but I would not describe my condition that way today even though technically it is accurate. The piece is ripe with other terrible language such as “Young suffers from…” And “MD plagues approximately 1000 Hoosiers…”

I should note that the entire tone of my article is much more melancholy than I am today. Recall that the article started out as an extension of my personal journal. It was only reluctantly that I shared it with a few online friends in an obscure section of CompuServe and even more reluctantly that I allowed it to be published at all. Writing it was a catharsis that let me put much of that melancholy and negativity behind me.

A few years ago I posted that sidebar on my blog and I’ve included a link in the description here.

Speaking of archaic language… I described a meeting we had in Mrs. Atkins’ room as a “rap session”. That doesn’t mean we were spittin’ rhymes to a beat. In those days a rap session was just a gathering where people would sit around and talk. As I said in an early episode of this podcast, language evolves and depends on context and consensus. The phrase “rap session” has a vastly different meaning now than it did in the 1980s.

As I reread the piece for the first time in years, I realized they had cut (or I had cut) one of my favorite passages and definitely my mom’s favorite passage. The article said that some people saw my mother as the woman who thought Roberts School wasn’t good enough for her son. I believe I followed that up with the story where one of the teachers had admitted that my mom was right all along and that mainstreaming was a better way to implement special education. I concluded that story with a one-sentence paragraph that simply stated…

“Mom had a good time at the reunion too.”

Her reaction when she read that sentence was to laugh out loud and say, “Hell yes I did!”

That sort of one-sentence blunt understatement such as, “Mom had a good time at the reunion too” is a recurring feature of my writing style. I can’t believe I never noticed it was cut. I really need to find that unabridged version of the story. That sentence became a kind of Tamarian shorthand between my mom and me for any gross understatement.

I made reference in the story to various “super-cripple” people such as FDR, Stevie Wonder, and “that girl from ‘The Other Side of the Mountain’” That is a reference to the 1975 film of that name about Olympic hopeful skier Jill Kinmont who had a spinal cord injury just before the 1956 Olympics. It left her paralyzed from the shoulders down.

By the way, my favorite scene from the film was when she was visited by a former boyfriend and she was celebrating a great accomplishment in her recovery. She tries to pick up a potato chip out of a bowl of chips. She manages to get one trapped between her thumb and palm but spilled about half the bowl in the process. She was so happy she could do it. He looked at her like, “What the fuck? I thought you were getting better.” If I recall the story correctly, he dumped her after that. She goes on to find happiness with another man.

Anyway, that wraps up all of the historical references you might not have gotten.

The article concludes with the idea that I miss being a “pioneer” like Northwest High School’s mascot the Space Pioneer. I enumerated three things that I intended to do. First I was going to continue to do computer programming, especially in applications for disabled people. I didn’t do much of that for the next several decades but in the last decade or so I have heavily focused my efforts in assistive technology.

Second I said I was going to continue to keep my options open regarding relationships with women and not presume that parts of my life are closed. Although I never did find that one special someone with whom I could spend the rest of my life, I did have some very fulfilling relationships with women including finally losing my virginity at age 35 in an intense friends-with-benefits relationship. Not being a kiss-and-tell person, I can’t say for sure how much of that story you’ll get to hear in future episodes.

Third, I said that the reaction to my article made me believe I had talent as a writer. I implied that I was going to write my autobiography. I did write a book a few years later but it was a computer programming book about an open-source computer graphics rendering project I worked on. I’ve done extensive blogging over the years and have gotten very positive feedback about that.

However, the closest thing I’ve written to an autobiography is this podcast. Let’s be honest here. I call this podcast “Contemplating Life” and I try to keep it as generic as possible but in fact, it’s really “Contemplating My Life”. If I called it, “The Autobiography of Chris Young” even fewer people would listen or watch. And it’s not exclusively my biography. I wanted the freedom to go off on other tangents such as my Oscar movie reviews. At some point I will dig into politics or whatever other topics move me.

I could’ve turned these reflections into a book and even self-published if I had to. Being a writer is arrogant. You believe you have something worthwhile to say and that people will enjoy reading it. I just wasn’t convinced that as my entire life story, it was worth the pain and effort to write the whole thing. But I do believe I have some interesting stories to tell and that’s why I do the podcast. To tell these stories about my life and talk about other things besides my own life when I feel like doing so. So it isn’t exclusively contemplating my life even though that’s a big part of it as you’ve already seen.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe

In this week’s episode I will read my award-winning biographical feature “The Reunion” which appeared in the September 1987 issue of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 22 of Contemplating Life.

This episode is going to be quite a departure from our usual episode. As you know if you’ve been following along, in 1986 I wrote an article that was published in the September 1987 issue of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine. Last week I told the story of how I wrote it and how it got published. This week I’m going to read the article for you.

The article titled “The Reunion” is a memoir of my days in a special education school that was inspired by attending an all-school reunion.

The YouTube version will contain video that I shot the day as well as an occasional related photo. So for your listening pleasure… Here is…

The Reunion by Chris Young

It began just over one year ago with an invitation in a small hand-addressed envelope. The end result has been a serious re-evaluation of my life goals.

Although it can be an emotionally risky exercise, often a person needs to take a look back at his life in broad terms to remember where he has been, how he has changed or failed to change and how he can proceed with his life with some sense of purpose. I’ve just been through such an exercise.

Inside that little envelope was an embossed card which read, “You are invited to an Open House at James E. Roberts Public School #97 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on May 18, 1986 commemorating 50 years of educating handicapped students in Indianapolis. And on the occasion of the closing of James E. Roberts School.”

The school where I spent 13 years of my life and where I had not visited in 13 years, was being closed. I looked forward to the opportunity to visit the school one last time. I needed to say a fond farewell to a building full of wonderful memories of the early years and to forgive and forget the memories of the later years.

I was born July 12, 1955, with a hereditary form of muscular dystrophy. [NOTE: At the time this article was written I did not know the exact name of my disease. I was later diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2] Ironically, that summer an event occurred which began to make the Roberts school obsolete. Jonas Salk began widespread use of his polio vaccine and the disease promptly disappeared. Indianapolis Public Schools built the school in 1935 to educate the large number of children who struggled with the effects of polio, rheumatic fever and other diseases. It became a showplace for special education.

I was enrolled at Roberts School’s kindergarten at age 5 and continued there through high school. The building is part of who I am and why I think, feel and act the way I do.

It was with great anticipation that I awaited the reunion with old friends and teachers. I especially looked forward to seeing my old girlfriend, Rose Ellen Shewman — the first true love of my life. From my crush on her in seventh grade, through the “puppy love” and heartbreak of eighth grade and the true friendship that developed in high school, Rosie always has been my fondest memory.

For the first few years after graduation, we kept in touch by phone, but I lost track of her from about 1975-1983. A few years ago I found out where she lived and gave her a call. At that time she was still single and lived alone in an apartment in Greenwood. It was good to hear her voice again, but our mutual promises to get together “soon” never were fulfilled.

If Rosie was as lonely as I, perhaps, as we had done in high school, we could find comfort together. The gathering at our alma mater might at least be the reopening of our old friendship if not the rekindling of our old romance. I called her a few days prior to the reunion.

Her new husband answered the phone.

When the day arrived for the open house at Roberts School, I gathered up my video camera mounted on my motorized wheelchair to record sights and faces of my past. I rolled into the school auditorium and fought through a crowd of alumni, staff, teachers and family rushing to and fro as we all spotted old friends across the room.

Some of the teachers are not as enthusiastic about the closing as I. One retired teacher voiced her concerns to me over the closing of Roberts. “I’m not so sure this ‘mainstreaming’ is such a good idea,” she said.

“As one who has seen both sides,” I replied, “I have faith it can and does work.” My last three years of high school were spent going half day to Northwest High School in my neighborhood and half day to Roberts.

She feels that I’m an exception. “You were always such a bright boy,” she would say. It’s true that the typical Roberts student of recent years probably has varying degrees of mental handicaps along with the physical problems. However, the students with mental handicaps benefit from having their special classes housed in a building with regular students. Communities that had no special education programs were forced by a 1969 law to establish them. Most of them have chosen mainstreaming and it works. With Roberts closed, mainstreaming will happen more and more in Indianapolis, too.

I have intimate connections to Roberts School, but they are pale in comparison to Clara Rose Holmes, my third grade teacher. The 60-year-old teacher has been at Roberts for nearly its entire history. She attended Roberts in grades five through eight because her left leg and right arm were weakened by polio. She then attended Shortridge High School and Butler University. She returned to student teach at Roberts and has taught there ever since. Nobody was surprised that she was taking this opportunity to retire. “It just wouldn’t be the same elsewhere,” she recently told a friend.

Miss Holmes was a great influence on me in both positive and negative ways. She recognized my potential as an academically gifted student and allowed me to progress rapidly with two other students. In third grade we were doing long division before the slower kids were finished learning multiplication. She encouraged me to work hard and to feed my curiosity. She instilled in me a love for reading. These gifts have been a source of strength for me over the years.

In recognizing that I had academic potential, she assumed that “busy-work” was a waste of my time and talents. I was exempt from the tedium of some math and spelling drills. I concentrated on more interesting concepts such as compound sentence structure, geometry, logic and science. The end result is that I can turn very clever phrases, understand mathematical abstractions and am a computer programmer of great skill. On the other hand I cannot accurately add a column of numbers or spell worth a damn.

One thing Miss Holmes and others at Roberts taught me is that having a handicap does not hinder one from doing one’s part in contributing to a group. Nor does a handicap exempt one from those responsibilities. We all shared responsibilities in her class. The more able-bodied students pushed wheelchairs. The smarter ones tutored. This emphasis on ability not disability has been an important part of my own dealing with my handicap. She fears that in a regular school such lessons will be lost.

I understand Miss Holmes’ concerns. But I’d rather see the same lessons she taught me presented in a regular school so that handicapped and non-handicapped students can experience together the sense of responsibility toward one another that was a tradition at Roberts.

There was an article about her in the newspaper soon after the reunion. The headline read “I.P.S. closing its haven for handicapped, but teacher won’t forget.” We won’t forget you either, Miss Holmes.

As I entered high school, it became apparent that the program at Roberts was substandard. Mom arranged a deal where I could attend Northwest High School for a half day and take classes on the first floor. The other half of the day I attended Roberts and took whatever classes were upstairs and inaccessible at Northwest. The school system provided transportation on a wheelchair bus in the morning and afternoon, but the midday ride between Roberts and Northwest was provided by Mom. Every day for my last three years of high school, she drove seven miles across town and seven miles back just so l could get a quality education. She did this through a problem pregnancy, a lung disorder and other hardships.

My mom is remembered by some as he lady who thought Roberts wasn’t good enough for her son. The truth was that none of us belonged there.

Beatrice Rogers remembers me well. She was my fifth grade teacher when I got my first motorized wheelchair. She remembers that I’d had it less than an hour when I ran over her foot. Mrs. Rogers was a wonderful teacher who made her classroom interesting by always having projects going on. I had a nice chat with her at the reunion and it brought back memories.

The most important event that fifth grade year was that I got my first motorized wheelchair. The PTA supplied manual wheelchairs for all the kids to use at school and I had one of own for use at home. But in January 1965, Mrs. Vern Hollingsworth donated a motorized wheelchair to the school in memory of her husband who was the chair’s previous owner. I was chosen as a student who could benefit from its use. I never met Mrs. Hollingsorth or knew anything about her except that she had donated the chair and put a small brass plaque on it advertising the fact. Having to answer a hundred times, “Who’s Vern Hollingsworth?” was a small price to pay for the fantastic freedom the chair provided.

My most memorable experience of the chair was the first day I drove up and down “The Big Ramp.” Roberts School was designed from the beginning as a school for the handicapped. Why they made it multilevel and two story is a mystery to me. There were small ramps between various ground levels and they were quite tame. My motorized wonder easily climbed them. Going down them I always made sure the way was clear and then I would let it fly downhill. But I didn’t discover that my wheelchair behaved differently on ramps until I tackled The Big Ramp.

Grades six through high school as well as the therapy departments were on the second floor and accessed by either elevator or ramp. One day soon after I got my new chair, I had to go upstairs to practice for a music program with the upper grades. Rather than wait on the elevator with the other fifth graders, I ventured up the big ramp alone.

I was a little scared on the trip up, but the trip down later that day was really terrifying. The first segment isn’t too steep but is longer than the little ramps I was used to. As I started down, everything was OK until I began drifting to the right. I tried turning left but the chair steers by speeding up one motor and slowing the other. My attempts to turn were barely successful and it caused me to go too fast. The length of the ramp let me go faster still. As I approached the level 180-degree left turn I recalled my training-“When in trouble, let go.” I let go of the joystick and kept going anyway! I crashed into the curved brick wall and slid half way around it. My right footrest was bent inward and my foot was twisted but not hurt.

With my reputation at stake, I had to go on. Carefully, I drove around the curved landing and stared down the most terrifying hall in the building. The longest, steepest section of ramp lay before me and I didn’t yet know what had gone wrong on the last section. Unlike the sturdy brick wall I’d just hit, below me was a banked curve protected by a railing that looked much weaker than when I’d seen it before.

Aiming as carefully as I could, I started down — going much too fast for safety. Again I drifted to the right. My attempts to correct the drifting were in vain, and 15 feet from the curve I glanced off the right side wall and let go of the controls again. The slide along the rail slowed me somewhat, but I still hit the balcony railing. I was thrown against my safety belt and slumped forward over it. The rail held strong and my other footrest bent to absorb the impact. I yelled for help and someone ran up the ramp to rescue me.

I later learned that you can coast down the ramp without applying any power and still go quite fast. To stop, you don’t let go. You pull back on the joystick and apply reverse power. By the time I reached sixth grade I was Hell on wheels. I’d take most sections of the ramp under full power. To turn, I’d lock one wheel in full reverse while giving full forward power to the other wheel. The narrow hard rubber tires would slide on the smooth floor and I’d whip around the turns in a four-wheel drift like a sprint car on a dirt track.

But that was years ago and I’ve just settled into my third motorized wheelchair. My last trip down the big ramp was 13 years ago on the last day of school. Part of my nostalgic return to Roberts had to include one more trip up and down The Big Ramp. My video camera recorded the trips but there was no way to recreate the speed or the sliding turns.

Thirteen more years of muscular dystrophy have taken their toll on me. I barely have the strength in my right arm to push the control joystick while riding on smooth level ground. Sharp turns even on level ground are difficult. Gone are the split second timing and delicate dexterity that are required to navigate the wheelchair equivalent of Pike’s Peak.

Of all the teachers I hoped to see that day, Ron Kohl was at the top of my list. I wasn’t disappointed. Mr. Kohl really enjoyed the challenge of an intelligent, lazy student like me. The reason I’d hoped to see him was to confess how I’d cheated on an I.Q. test. One summer, Mr. Kohl called and said that as a class assignment for a master’s degree course, he had to give a student an I.Q. test and analyze the results. I agreed to be his subject.

He came to my house for two days and gave me a battery of standard achievement tests. During the tests we sat in the same room across a desk from each other and he never left the room. Yet, by my superior intelligence and dumb luck, I discovered a flaw in the test design and cheated right before his eyes. Somehow I got the nerve to tell him after all these years.

As in most tests, you were required to fill in the multiple choice answers with a No. 2 pencil. The entire first half of the test I took legitimately. For part two you flip the page over and mark the other side. The lazy designer used the same key for the front and back. As you looked through the paper, the black marks lined up! Furthermore, you flipped the page top to bottom. The easy questions at the top of side one are opposite the difficult questions on side two. That means that the harder the question on side two is, the more reliable your information from the other side becomes.

Most multiple choice questions have five choices. Two of them are obviously wrong, one is probably wrong and the thing that separates the men from the boys is discerning between the last two. Whenever one of them matched a mark from the other side, I picked it. The test went faster, I answered more questions and was less likely to be hurt by guessing.

“I’ve rationalized it all,” I told him, “by saying that if you’re smart enough to cheat and get away with it, then you deserve the extra points.”

He laughed and agreed, adding that it was no wonder he had such a rough time analyzing it. He then said I only ended up with a 115-120 I.Q. I always figured I had 110-115 anyway.

Later that afternoon while touring the rooms upstairs, I ran into Ron Kohl in his former classroom. There was a photo album belonging to Miss Holmes on display. Together, Mr. Kohl and I looked through the old photos and exchanged stories about my former classmates.

One special memory came to mind when he stumbled across photos of Leslie and Nancy Gilson. They were the only other students with motorized wheelchairs and Nancy gave me driving tips after my bad trip down the ramp. Nancy was two years ahead of me and her sister, Leslie, was perhaps three to four years older. They both were very bright and extremely frail from the effects of neuromuscular disease. I would race down the halls clutching my joystick like a Hearst four-speed, but these innocent little girls would daintily grasp their joysticks and could outrun me any day.

Their disease was far worse than mine. Leslie died in her senior year but was awarded a diploma anyway. I asked Mr. Kohl if Nancy was gone yet. “Yes,” he answered, “she died several years ago.”

“I doubted she was around,” I said, knowing that virtually all my friends with MD are dead by now.

He then related the story of the day Leslie died. Nancy was in school and knew her sister was in poor shape. Word spread among the staff that Leslie had died and the family asked that Nancy not be told until she arrived home that afternoon. When they told her that Leslie had died, she very calmly began giving orders, “She wants to be buried in her blue dress, the bearers should be these people, the eulogy should be by … etc.” The sisters had prepared for this day for a long time. Late at night in bed they would talk and make plans for the day when there would be only one Gilson sister.

I miss Nancy. She was a dedicated student and I looked up to her. I’m sorry she’s gone. But I’m happy she is reunited with Leslie in a place where all curbs have ramps, all ramps are shallow and motorized wheelchairs all run the same speed.

When Rose’s husband answered the phone, I suppressed my disappointment and asked to talk to her. She told me she met her husband two years ago, which was about the last I’d talked to her. They were married the following November.

She said they were planning to attend the reunion and I’d see her then. Although we had talked several times over the years, I’d not seen her since graduation day. I know that Friedereich’s ataxia is a degenerative neurological disease and I could tell that her speech was beginning to slur. I didn’t know what other effects 13 years of the disease might have had.

Rose was not only any first true love in junior high, she was my first true friend in high school. At 17, she had a tall thin Figure, great legs, sandy blond hair and blue eyes. Rose’s most distinctive feature has always been her very angular sculptured face with high cheekbones and a broad smile that creates wonderful dimples.

As I toured the school auditorium talking to friends, someone said, “Rose is over there.” I turned around to see her a few feet away talking to a teacher. Her husband was standing behind her leaning on her wheelchair. I approached, aimed my video camera carefully and turned it on.

She looked great to me. Her figure is the same and she had her hair cut slightly shorter than it usually had been. She was wearing large, designer glasses rather than her ’70s wire rims. The main change was the wonderful air of maturity she had acquired. This was not the cute 17 year old I’d said goodbye to 13 years ago. This was a distinguished, mature, 30-year-old woman who still had the same broad smile and blue eyes.

Although she was somewhat shakier than before, I’d prepared myself for the effects of her handicap to be much worse than they were.

With my video camera running I waited a few seconds until she finished her conversation, and then I said, “Hi Rose.”

She turned and looked right at me and smiled, then introduced me to her husband. “This is Chris, he’s the guy who called last week.” I said some complimentary things to him about his great catch and congratulated them. I told her she was looking good and I was happy to see her. We chatted about various teachers we’d run into. I noticed she had a photo album, so I asked about it. It contained her wedding pictures. I suffered through looking at those, but I already knew what she looked like in a wedding dress. I’d seen it in my dreams for at least 10 years.

I’m glad I saw Rosie again. I’m happy that she is happy, and I am not jealous that her husband married her. I had 13 years when I could have chased her and didn’t. I’m jealous that she now has someone with whom she can share her joy and sadness, her highs and lows her pleasure and her pain.

I had myself a good, hard cry all the way home.

They called it a high school but it wasn’t.

It was 30 students, two teachers, two classrooms, 12 periods a day each 30 minutes long, no labs, no equipment, little opportunity to grow socially from ages 14-18. It wasn’t a high school. If you took the maximum five subjects and had lunch one period, that filled six of your 12 periods. The other three hours a day were “study hall.” Most of the time we tried to study in the same room while other classes met. There was a balcony porch near the high school rooms and we eventually got permission to study outside when the weather permitted. On rainy days we’d sit in the doorway and watch it rain and wonder why we ever gave a damn about anything. We’d talk about opportunities closed to us, sexual experiences we’d dreamed of and uncertain plans for our future. Depression ran rampant through us and we’d ask ourselves and each other, “Why try?”

I toured the high school rooms that day at the reunion and they were almost empty. One looked like it was used as a storeroom and mimeograph room. I tried the doors to the porch. It was locked but I could see that the tables were gone. Appropriately enough, it was raining.

I pressed close to the window and ran my camera to record that view. I need to remember always the depression of those days. I need to remember them vividly, so I’ll never be tempted to withdraw back into that state.

In addition to the two full-time high school teachers, we shared two part-time teachers with the junior high for shop, home economics and music. Betty Atkins was one of them. I saw her at the reunion and smiled broadly at her saying how good it was to see her. She smiled back and was happy to see me too. We didn’t really talk much but those exchanged smiles were important. We both remember a time when I wouldn’t smile at gunpoint.

I recall one day she called me aside and lectured me for being unfriendly and rude. “When?” I asked.

“Nearly always,” she said. “I pass you in the hall and smile at you or say ‘Hi!’ and you mostly ignore me or just grunt. Smile once in awhile or people will think you’re being rude.”

I explained to her that while I wasn’t trying to be rude or offensive, often I didn’t have anything to smile about.

I’m not sure if that conversation had anything to do with it, but several weeks later they called all 30 of us together in Mrs. Atkins’ room for a “rap session” to talk out our problems. It seemed to do us little good at the time, but I now consider it a turning point for me. During the rap session that day I made a big speech.

[NOTE written in 2018: It occurred to me that a present-day reader might not know what I meant by “rap session” in the early 1970s. It had nothing at all to do with rap music which I suspect had not yet been invented. A rap session was just to sit down and talk and air out your feelings.]

“You hear all these stories about the ‘Super-Cripple’ types who make it in the world and are successful and are supposed to be our role models,” I said. “But I’m not FDR or Stevie Wonder or that girl from ‘The Other Side of the Mountain.’ Where did they get that strength? How did they overcome their handicaps? What do I do to tap into their magic that lets them cope or achieve or be somebody?”

Nobody could tell me.

And I then realized that nothing magic was going to happen. The way to do it was to just do it. Just be. There’s no magic. Perhaps it was indirectly, but Betty Atkins helped me realize all of that. You either do something in your life, or sit and do nothing. I’m a “do something” person.

So that day at the reunion, I smiled at Betty Atkins.

Here’s a litany of people I miss s dearly who weren’t at the reunion. I’ve included my relationship with them and why they weren’t there.

Terry Johnson, best friend, died at 18 of muscular dystrophy and pneumonia.

Calvin Brandon. buddy died at 24 of muscular dystrophy and pneumonia.

Wayman Glass, buddy, died at 24 of muscular dystrophy and pneumonia.

Gene Storms, class nerd, died at 16 of muscular dystrophy and pneumonia.

Mark Heron, neighbor and best friend, died at 25 of muscular dystrophy and pneumonia.

Tim Monasmith, classmate, died at 21 of complications of his handicap.

Dan Moran, classmate with whom I argued a lot but never had the chance to apologize, died at 17 of complications of his handicap.

Carl Nash, buddy who I’ve seen several times over the years, who always greets me by saying disgustedly, “Aren’t you dead yet? I thought all you dystrophy assholes were dead by now. Hurry up and conform!” That’s Nash’s way of saying, “I’m glad that at age 31 you’ve beaten the odds.” Nash is living in southern Indiana with his wife, Mary, also a Roberts alum.

James Allen Whitney, a. k.a. “JAW,” class clown, alive and still clowning somewhere.

Estel Troxel, best friend, moved to Kentucky at age 16. I haven’t heard from him since.

Cheryl Abney, girlfriend in kindergarten, married and employed as a secretary despite the fact that she was born with no arms.

Lilly Ottinger, girlfriend in fourth and fifth grade, transferred to regular school and whereabouts unknown.

Cheryl Fayette, my date at the senior prom, married and living somewhere.

Mr. Batt, shop teacher who didn’t send us to the principal the day we stole Cheryl Fayette’s purse and hung it out the boy’s restroom window and dared Cheryl to come in and get it, his whereabouts unknown.

Mrs. Ashabrener, principal (a.k.a. Mrs. Trash Burner), died of cancer.

John Sementa, janitor who told us jokes all the time, whereabouts unknown.

When Roberts School opened it was a pioneer. A pioneer named Salk robbed Roberts of its primary source of students. Many people, including my mother, who have worked hard for mainstreaming of handicapped kids, were pioneers. My heroes in junior high were pioneers like Neil Armstrong. The teams at my part-time high school Northwest are known as “The Space Pioneers.: I was the first wheelchair-bound student to attend that school and that was a type of pioneering itself. Some of the consulting I’ve done has been to apply computer technology to help handicapped people. I see pioneering in other aspects of my work too.

But that’s history. Roberts School became an anachronism in a modern world of mainstreamed special education. Salk has become disillusioned with the institute that bears his name and has left to work on an autobiography. The advocacy groups that fought for mainstreaming are dying out. Northwest High School was recently one of several considered for possible conversion to junior high by the school board. Although spectacular progress has been made to mainstream severely retarded students at Northwest, no efforts have been made to make the school accessible so other physically handicapped students can follow me there.

I have no control over those who are swallowed up by progress-with one exception. I control myself.

Have I become stagnant and lost my “pioneer spirit” while friends got married and raised children? Roberts School failed to stay at the forefront of special education. Have I likewise rested on my early accomplishments?

My business survives but it doesn’t really prosper. I’ve reestablished my relationship with God and the Church but it’s now an ongoing gradual spiritual growth rather than the spectacular leaps of faith and understanding of times past. I’m pleased with the work I do, but it is sometimes tedious and lackluster. I’ve not totally given up on the idea of sharing my life with someone, but my prospects are poor.

Given all of the above, I think I’m keeping up OK. I’m not being left behind in the waves of progress.

But I’m no longer a pioneer . . . and I miss it.

After careful reflection on my life since the reunion last year. I’ve decided to do the following . ..

1) I’m going to continue to focus my computer programming skills in creative ways, especially applications of computers for handicapped users.

2) I’ll continue to keep options open in my relationships with women and not presume that parts of my life are closed.

3) I’m taking seriously the words of my friends who have read my journals and reflections such as this. I’m going to believe them when they say I’ve made them laugh, cry, think, feel and remember. A few years ago, a special friend told me I should write an autobiography. She has offered to advise me on getting it published and to correct my spelling. Others have encouraged me and made similar offers.

I can’t say “no” anymore. I’m going to explore and expand my experiences like the pioneer I once was.

So that’s it. My greatest success as an author. In next week’s episode, I will talk about what happened after the article was published and then we will continue with more stories about my high school days and I eventually transferred to attending a regular high school part-time.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

This week I discuss how I honed my craft as a writer by writing in online discussion forums on the CompuServe Information Service in the early 1980s long before the Internet was popular. This led me to write an award-winning article for a local magazine.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 21 of Contemplating Life.

Although it’s embarrassing to admit it, my storytelling techniques were influenced by Bill Cosby. I don’t want to be associated with him because I now know what a horrible human being he is. I no longer brag that we share the same birthday July 12. Still, I admire his ability as a storyteller. When he tells the famous story of his friend Fat Albert, he tells a lengthy tale simply to illustrate how fat Fat Albert was. Then he lets out a sigh and says, “Okay, I told you that story so I can tell you this one.” And then he tells the Fat Albert story that he wanted to tell to begin with.

I find myself using that technique a lot. I can’t tell you one story until I tell you the one before that. And I can’t tell that one until the one before that. So, there is a lot of “I told you that story so I can tell you this one” in this episode. And you’ve already seen that in previous episodes and will continue to see it in future ones. It’s how I remember things. It’s the way I think. And therefore it’s the way I write.

In 1986, I wrote an autobiographical magazine feature about my experiences in that school. The article titled “The Reunion” was a reflection prompted by an all-school reunion of Indianapolis Public Schools #97 James E. Roberts School for the Handicapped. The reunion, the event not the story, was to commemorate the closing of that school.

The article was published in the September 1987 issue of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine. It was awarded “Best Magazine Feature” by the Indiana Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists – Sigma Delta Chi.

My plan for next week is to read the article for you.

That’s the story I want to tell. But before I do so, I have to tell the story behind the story. And the story behind that one. And the story behind that one. And before I could tell you any of those stories I had to tell you about how I tell stories like Bill Cosby did. It’s all connected.

Okay… Where do I begin to tell the story? “The whole universe was in a hot, dense state then 14 billion years ago expansion started… Wait…”

No, no, no, no… Okay, maybe that is too far back.

Let’s try to get a little bit closer to the story we want to tell.

Set your way back machine to Thursday, May 26, 1983 – three years and eight days before the reunion. It was the final day of practice for the Indianapolis 500. Although there haven’t been carburetors in IndyCars for many years, that day still is referred to as “Carburetion Day” or “Carb Day” for short.

I’ve been a lifelong fan of the Indy 500. I almost started telling you a long story about how I’m a race fan but let’s cut that one out and save it for a future episode. Let’s just say it all started on Carb Day 1983. The practice session only lasts about two hours in the late morning rather than all day for most practice days. Mom attended with me and on our way home I asked her if we could stop by the RadioShack Computer Store on Crawfordsville Road. I wanted to see if they had the new RadioShack Model 100 Computer.

This revolutionary device was arguably the first true laptop computer. It measured 300x 215x50mm or about 11.75×8.5x2in and weighed just over 3 pounds. The gray monochrome LCD screen could display only 8 lines of 40 characters each. That seems ridiculously small by today’s standards and was also small compared to the 64×16 characters of the Model I. However the only “portable” computers in those days were the size of a suitcase and weighed nearly 30 pounds.

I fell in love with the machine the minute I saw it and we ended up taking one home that day. Normally I don’t remember the exact day that I purchased a computer. The sales receipt is long gone. But I remembered I bought it on the way home from Carb Day. A Google search told me the Model 100 was introduced in April 1983. Wikipedia told me the date of Carb Day for the 1983 race. I could’ve just said, “I bought it in the spring of 83” but where is the fun in that?

My dad had to disassemble my expensive new toy to wire in some extra buttons to operate the control and shift keys. In those days, I would type by poking at the keys with a stick in my right hand. I would hold pushbuttons in my left hand to operate the modifier keys. We managed to successfully wire in the micro switches on a cable about 18 inches long.

The Model 100 also had a built-in 300-baud modem. Note: “baud” is the number of bits per second. The fastest that dial-up Internet used was 56,000 baud. Today’s Internet speed is measured in gigabits or billions of bits per second.

When I built my first personal computer in 1978, I had a modem that I used for connecting to the IUPUI mainframe DEC-System 10 but by 1983 I have left my job working for the Indiana University Department of Medical Genetics and I didn’t have much use for a modem.

The Model 100 became an instant hit with journalists. The following year while I was at the Speedway, I was hanging out with reporters in the press room. Many of them were writing their stories using the device and then uploading them directly to their newspaper or wire service.

The Model 100 included a famous CompuServe “Snap-Pack”. It was a sign-up kit for the CompuServe Information Service. It consisted of a small envelope that you could rip off the perforated end and snap it open. Inside you would find an account number and a password to sign up for the online service.

CompuServe was hosted on a network of DEC-System 10 mainframes like the one we had at IUPUI. Your account number was called a PPN which stood for “Project – Programmer Number”. It was two numbers separated by a comma. I still remember mine. It was 70136,62. It was not only your account number but it was your email address as well.

Although technically the Internet was “born” in January 1983, very few people used it. Commercial Internet providers didn’t appear until around 1989. CompuServe was the first consumer online information service. There were also private computer bulletin board systems known as BBS. CompuServe was followed by services such as Prodigy and AOL but all of this predated the public use of the Internet.

I don’t know for certain when I finally opened up that snap-pack and signed into CompuServe for the first time but I’m guessing it was in the fall of 1983.

CompuServe was completely text-based. It offered email and real-time chat rooms known as CB rooms named after citizen’s band radio. You could use a nickname that was referred to as a “handle” also patterned after CB radio lingo. CompuServe also offered discussion forums called “SIGs” or “special interest groups”. You could read news articles, get weather reports, get sports scores, get stock quotes, and book airline tickets. It featured many of the things that we do with the Internet today as long as it didn’t involve images, video, or audio. By the way, in 1987 CompuServe invented the “Graphics Interchange Format” or GIF files that we use today. They updated the specification in 1989 to allow for animation. But this was still 1983. No online graphics.

There were local telephone numbers in major cities that you could use to connect to the service. However, the service was quite expensive. You were billed about $6 per hour or rather 10 cents per minute. Running at 300 baud that could add up very quickly.

I gravitated towards a SIG known as NIP-SIG which stood for National Information Providers Special Interest Group. It was the gathering place for newspaper people who kept the news pages updated. However, over time they evolved into a place where people discussed a variety of issues of the day. It eventually was renamed the “Issues Forum”. I ended up there because they had a section called “Handicapped Issues”. Not only did I participate in that subsection on a variety of disability-related issues, but I also discussed politics, religion, and other topics in the other subsections.

Each SIG was managed by a System Operator or sysop for short. The sysop of the Issues Forum was an amazing woman named Georgia Griffith. She was blind I believe for most of her life if not from birth. She accessed CompuServe using a braille terminal that would display one line of text as a series of raised bumps in braille format. She had been a music teacher for much of her adult life but had retired from that and now worked for the Library of Congress transcribing music into braille. She had a special device that she would drag across a musical score and it would create a raised shape of the music staff and notes that she could feel with her finger. I was amazed by the technology.

It was only after I knew her for several months that I learned she was also deaf. She lost her hearing late in life. I took the news pretty hard. I think it was probably the only time in my life that I felt sorry for someone regarding their disability. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to be blind, build your life around music, and then later lose your hearing. I took it as a tragic loss for a dear friend. I had to remind myself that she had gone deaf long before I first met her. She was the same person I always knew yet I had no idea who she really was. Her second disability was completely hidden from me and of course, I wouldn’t have known she was blind either had she not told me.

I had already learned that communicating with people online was a great equalizer. It may sound trite or cliché but it allows you to connect mind to mind without any physical characteristics coming into play. My first realization of this phenomenon was when I was talking one-on-one with a woman whose online name was Daria Danai. At one point she simply asked, “Looks?” wondering what I looked like. I kind of freaked out because it was the first time in my life in a social situation when someone didn’t know I had a disability. I don’t recall what happened but I think I just disconnected. I wrote about it later in the Handicapped Issues forum.

In some ways, it was liberating to be completely free of my disability. On the other hand, I discovered that hiding my disability was hiding my true self. I’ve had plenty of opportunities in the decades since then either on CompuServe or on the Internet where I had the opportunity to keep my disability a secret and it just didn’t feel right.

Somewhere along the way, I drew the attention of Pamela Bowen. She was the city editor of the Huntington, WV Harold-Dispatch newspaper. Her husband Charlie also worked for the newspaper and they both worked as information providers for CompuServe. Charlie wrote a book called “How to Get the Most Out of CompuServe.”

She told me both publicly and privately that she thought I was a talented writer. We began exchanging lengthy emails with each other over the next several years in which we told each other our life stories. My emails to her became a kind of personal journal in which I shared my innermost thoughts.

We became extremely close friends. It was amazing the bond that developed between us. Unfortunately for me, yet fortunately for her, she is very happy in her marriage. If not for the strength of her relationship with her husband, I’m confident that we would have been even closer.

My letters to Pamela provided me with the kind of therapeutic value of a personal journal with the added bonus that I knew someone out there was reading what I was writing and appreciating it. At the time, the word blog had not yet been invented. Yet essentially that’s what I was writing. It was a personal blog about my life with an audience of one.

On several occasions, my mother said that she was going to collect all of the emails that I had written to Pamela and publish them as my biography. My response was, “Over my dead body.”

Her reply was, “Matter of fact… Yes exactly. When you die that’s what I’m going to do.” In those days we had no idea I could possibly outlive her.

Because CompuServe became prohibitively expensive for me, I had to find a workaround. A sysop had the authority to grant a “free flag” to members who contributed to the discussion groups. Eventually, I became the discussion leader of the “Handicapped Issues” section. That would give me free access as long as I was logged into the Issues Forum. If I logged in and quickly moved to that group, I would only be charged a few cents each time I entered and exited. However, writing emails was costly. Even if I found a way to compose them offline and upload them, at extremely low baud rates that was still costly.

Pamela was so committed to our continuing correspondence that she shared with me an account number and password to a somewhat secret file transfer area that was used by the content providers. I would log into her account, and upload a file with the name such as “pb071285” which meant it was a letter to PB on July 12, 1985. When she had read the message, she would delete it from the directory and leave me a reply with a “cy071385” the following day.

I eventually migrated from the Issues Forum to another popular feature on CompuServe – Human Sexuality Support Groups which held the online address HSX-100. It was operated by noted authors and sex educators Howard and Martha Lewis. I believe they had written a sex education book for high school use. On CompuServe, they had a series of pages of information about human sexuality as well as a lively discussion forum. Eventually, I was recruited by them to start a Handicapped Sexuality section on their forum.

My group wasn’t much of a success. I believe we attracted less than 10 participants and once we had each shared as much about our romantic successes and failures as we cared to share, it kind of went quiet and we eventually dissolved the group.

Howard appreciated my skill as a writer and suggested I start a section of personal reflections about my life with a disability. He came up with the name “CY’s Eye on Life”. If you listened to the first episode of this podcast I explained that I nearly called this podcast by that name but it’s a very confusing phrase to listen to. In case you don’t understand what I’m saying it is my initials CY an apostrophe S, eye (as in eyeball) on life. CY’s Eye on Life.

So, I told you those stories so I could tell you this one.

In early 1986, I received a small hand-addressed envelope containing an invitation that read, “You are invited to an Open House at James E. Roberts Public School #97 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on May 18, 1986, commemorating 50 years of educating handicapped students in Indianapolis. And on the occasion of the closing of James E. Roberts School.”

I attended that open house and it brought back many emotional memories of my 13 years attending that school. After the event, I began writing a series of messages in the HSX Forum in my “CY’s Eye on Life” subsection. This series got rave reviews not only from professional writers like my friend Pamela but from many other people. I printed out copies of the messages and shared them with friends and family who did not have access to CompuServe. It also brought rave reviews.

Many, many people strongly encouraged me to submit it somewhere for publication but I had no interest in doing so. Writing those stories was a catharsis for me. I wanted to get those feelings out of my system and put them behind me. I didn’t want to have anything more to do with it once it was written.

One day, I was watching the noon news and there was an interview with a woman named Deborah Paul. She was the editor of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine. She said something I will never forget. She said, “I never feel like an experience is complete until I’ve written about it.” That precisely described my feeling about my writing. I need to write about things to put my experiences in perspective. I concluded that if this was the way she felt about writing, perhaps she would be open to publishing my work. If they liked it, great. If they didn’t, it would get all of my friends and family off my back because I could say I tried.

I took the series of messages that I had written and compiled them together into a single narrative. I submitted it to the magazine. In the topping letter, I mentioned what I had heard Ms. Paul say in that interview about why she wrote and how I felt the same way.

I don’t know if I told her that it was based on something I had written on CompuServe. These days, that would’ve been a dealbreaker. If you put something on the Internet, especially for free to the public, no one will buy publishing rights. If it was behind a paywall such as for Patreon subscribers, you might get away with it or they might consider it a reprint. But in those days, nobody cared about online publishing.

A few weeks later I received a handwritten note from Ms. Paul.

She said that she was going to write me a quick thank you/rejection letter when she started reading what I had written and couldn’t put it down. She wasn’t sure what to do with it because it was not the kind of thing they usually publish. She said she showed it to some of her associate editors and they didn’t know what to do with it either. She asked that I give them a couple of weeks and they would get back to me.

I did hear back in about two weeks in the form of a phone call. She said that they wanted to publish my story but there were three problems.

1. They never publish anything written in first person.

2. It doesn’t fit the format of the magazine.

3. It is too long.

She then said, “I got to thinking wait a minute… Just because we’ve never published a first-person feature before doesn’t mean we can’t start now. And I’m the editor of this magazine and I decide what is or is not our format. That leaves number three… It’s still too long.”

She gave me the option of giving me the story back again and allowing me to try to sell it somewhere else intact or to have them publish a shorter version. She said, “Chris, you’ve put your soul on paper. But we only want half of your soul”. We both laughed. When I told a friend about it, they said it reminded them of the line from the movie Amadeus when they told Mozart his music had too many notes.

She said, “I respect the fact that this is a very personal story to you so I want to give you the opportunity to submit a shorter version yourself. Or if you prefer I can just edit it. After all, that’s my job as editor. I edit.” I was happy to resubmit a shorter version.

As you might imagine, cutting your soul in two is no easy task. Writers never want their work cut but I was so happy that they would publish it I didn’t care. I resubmitted a shorter version of the story. The final version that appeared in the magazine had about five or six paragraphs cut from my resubmission and a couple of paragraphs that I had cut were put back in. I was very happy with the end result.

I don’t recall when I submitted the article or when it was accepted. It must’ve been late 1985 or early 1986 because she warned me they would be holding it until their September issue since it was school related. It would be a kind of back-to-school feature. Somewhere along the way, we made arrangements to go back to Roberts School to take some photos to accompany the piece. We also shot a photo in my home office and I supplied her with an eighth-grade class photo.

As the author, I received a couple of complimentary copies of the magazine. I wasn’t a subscriber. We also found out who was the distributor and my mom went directly t app 5o them and purchased about 10 copies so that we wouldn’t deplete the newsstand copies. I still have a couple of copies but I gave most of them away.

The response was phenomenal. I will talk more about what happened after the article appeared but I think it’s time to wrap things up for today. I haven’t decided yet if it will be read in 1 or 2 installments. In the episode following that, I will talk about what happened afterward.

I already mentioned that it received a top award in its category. More on that later.

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