One Leg

One Man's Web > Where I Live > One Leg

He has only one leg. His phone and concession ticket are tucked into its red sock. He's written a phone number on it too, just above the knee. A happy man he is... chatting away, seemingly unworried by the lack of a leg at what... 55? Mind you, the man he is chatting to is a carer. And the person he cares for is in the next wheelchair on the train. Young... perhaps 20. No voice. twisted into deformity... the chair is shaped and padded to hold his particular misshapen frame. A nice looking lad, but trapped in a buggered body. I wonder what he can hear and see? The loss of a leg might seem a small price to avoid that. 

The carer is a kind man. He has to do everything, steer the chair, wipe the boy's mouth... toilet him too, I guess. He spoke kindly as he arrived to wait for the train. And I noticed that although he has been talking to the man with one leg all the time on the train, he has held the boys hand. It is twisted around like arthritis in an old man and he has kept his fingers inside it constantly, squeezing the unresponsive hand every few seconds. It is obviously good to speak to someone else... to have a conversation with two sides, and yet the boy has not been forgotten.

The man in the chair sits quietly now the boy and his carer have gone. He watches the world go by. The lines of worry and anxiety on the other faces in the train are absent. He seems much more at peace with himself than some of us. 

I shouldn't think he feels no loss. I reckon he must wish he could walk... that he had both legs. But on the face of him there was a kind of freedom and acceptance that was healthy. And he rolled down the ramp off the train into a better life than some of us make for ourselves.

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