David doesn’t want your pity, but he doesn’t mind it if you stare. There he
sits, the left side of his face drooping slightly, the corner of his mouth
suspended in a delicate, permanent frown. Today he’s sporting mix-match
threads, an oversized tee shirt, a pair of filthy tennis shoes he borrowed
from a friend, and camouflage pants shredded underfoot.

His arms are covered in tattoos. Some homemade, some professional, some
professionally painted over to cover up the worst of the homemade tats. The
tats are chaotic, prompted by the compulsivity to express his inner rebel.
There’s the burning cross, a gigantic medieval dragon, two dangling skull
cherries, a Celtic rose, and Celtic dragon. There’s a large tat done in bold
letters above his left elbow that shouts the name of his hero OZZY!

And there’s more. Seven letters adorn the fingers on his left hand spelling
his nickname Skooter. The name starts with a half completed S and k on the
outside of his pointer finger. The middle finger, on through to the pinky
finger, spell oot. There’s an ink glob representing an e on the middle
knuckle of the pinky, and an r on the middle knuckle of the ring finger.
David’s always had a hard time planning ahead. When he ran out of fingers
and had more letters he simply dropped down a knuckle and worked his way
back across his hand.

He acquired another tat this year. This one consists of the ten letters of
his last name leaping three inches high in Old English lettering spanning
his shoulder blades. How did he pay for this tattoo? He traded his moped to
a friend—the would-be tattoo artist—for a deal that amounts to roughly one
hundred bucks a letter.

I tell him, “Look at the bright side, David. When you’re sitting at home
because you don’t have any wheels, you can look at your back in a mirror and
know who you are!”

Depending on the week, David will be sporting a different haircut. This week
his head is showing a week and a half of growth after having been sheared to
the nubs. A month from now it will resemble a decent barbershop cut and cap
him with an air of intelligence. David will then shave the sides of his head
to form a jagged Mohawk. As the weeks progress the lines on the Mohawk will
become more irregular, because not even a normal person can hold a razor in
one hand, a handheld mirror in his other hand, and then bounce his
reflection off the bathroom mirror and expect to cut straight lines.

What follows will be three weeks of spikes in which he looks like a
pineapple. His mother Gena and I joke with him about his unflattering
hairstyles, because advice sinks in better for him after a good laugh. About
the time we convince him the Mohawk must go, he promptly shears most of it
off, starting from the crown of his head and working his way forward. But he
always leaves the bangs, which will dangle over his forehead for a few more
weeks like a pasted on mustache until he shaves his head again and repeats
the process. I know this will happen again and again, because he’s been
repeating this cycle since his near death experience eighteen years ago.

We’ve recently moved from Utah and partly for David’s sake. The police in
St. George had him pegged as a druggie or a drunk. Officers would stop him
for merely stumbling down the sidewalk. I’d log the random checks down on
paper anticipating that I’d need to present documentation of the infractions
to a lawyer one day. My log grew to four pages in length, even though I’d
skipped all the adjectives. On average, the police “interviewed” him once a
month over a three-year period. The interviews were part of a new policing
trend in which the force was trying to better know the members of the
community. Funny, the officers never took the time to introduce themselves
to me, probably because I didn’t stumble along with a bad limp. Or maybe
they were just getting to know certain kinds of people whom they expected to
one day be ferrying over to the jailhouse.

I really can’t blame the police—can I? David is on prescription drugs and
walks like a drunk. Who wouldn’t if one of his legs was shorter than the
other, having been snapped at the thigh and pinned with steel bolts? David
walks on his tiptoes to compensate for one leg being shorter than the other.
His equilibrium will never recover since his head bounced off the hood of
that car hurling him fifteen meters into another parked car where he
collapsed lifeless in the middle of the road.

David requires an enormous amount of time and energy, which will become
evident in the telling of this, his story. After twenty-five years of caring
for David, I’m sad to report my cache of patience is about spent. I’ve
become much harder on the lad as the years have progressed. However, if I’m
free to give myself the benefit of the doubt, maybe I became the way I am
out of necessity. For when it comes to the sheer number and magnitude of the
unfortunate circumstances that transpire in David’s life, I’ve learned how
to decipher the real emergencies from the imaginary ones.

Just the other day Gena and I were vacationing in Idaho where we were eager
to spend a few days relaxing around campfires by the Snake River without
getting any calls from David. Why we were stupid enough to be so optimistic
I don’t know, because we’d never left David alone for more than a few days
without a major catastrophe occurring.

Dana, my daughter, calls the day after we arrive in Idaho and says, “David’s
driven himself to the emergency room on his moped. He thinks he’s having
another heart attack.”

This is David’s third heart attack this month. Should we be worried? As
parents we are obligated to be worried, but is a parent duty-bound to go
through the distress of a child thinking he is having a heart attack for
what must be the twentieth time this year?

He’s in good hands we convince ourselves. He’s at the hospital and we are
ten hours away anyway. Thank goodness he has Medicaid. We get the expected
call from Dana that he’s okay. We drive back to St. George the following
Monday. I tell Gena (her being the greatest of all mothers and me playing
the unsympathetic dad) that one of these days David’s going to fall asleep
on his arm and it will go numb, and then he’ll really think he’s having a
heart attack! (David’s gotten into the habit of reading one of Gena’s old
nursing diagnostic books, which advised him that tingling in the arm may
represent the onset of a heart attack.)

Guess what happens Tuesday? David wakes up, calls us from his apartment, and
convinces Gena he’s having yet another heart attack. Away to the emergency
room they fly. I stay home and mow the lawn. Needless to say, the signs and
symptoms miraculously disappear by the time he’s checked into the hospital.
Hours pass. (It’s the emergency room.) David wants to go home. He says, “I
don’t have time for this kind of son-of-a-bitchin-fuckin-bullshit.” Gena
forces him to wait and see the doctor, hoping the experience might deter him
from crying wolf tomorrow.

A doctor finally has time for David and asks, “What were you doing when you
noticed your arm was tingling?”

“I was sleeping and when I woke up my arm hurt.”

And then the doctor gives him $500.00 worth of emergency room medical
advice. “That can happen when you’re sleeping, David. Your arm might fall
asleep, but it doesn’t mean you’re having a heart attack.”

A few days after David’s imaginary heart attack he gets word that the
brother of his current fiancé is going to kick his ass. Bullies have been
using David as a punching bag to satisfy their sadistic proclivities ever
since they realized how vulnerable David is. I want to tell the brother,
“Why don’t you pick on someone who doesn’t have a brain injury?” but let it
drop. At David’s age my involvement in his affairs only weakens his stature
among his friends. David is panicked—hysterical. He will not go back to his
apartment to sleep or shower or change or eat or brush his teeth.

When he received the call and first learned of the bully’s intentions he
threw on my old army jacket over his pajama bottoms and drove over to his
grandma’s apartment. During the next four days he spent the nights on her
couch. Not until day five did he manage to gather enough guts to sleep in
his own bed. Monetary incentive might have boosted his courage. We told him
that he would not get his allowance until he went back to his apartment and
slept in his own bed.

David possesses a finite concept of the value of money. Ten dollars is a
hundred dollars is a thousand dollars. What he knows is that money is the
most sought after commodity and spoils like milk if you don’t spend it all
in one day. Give him any amount of cash and as long as there’s a store or
restaurant open he won’t stop buying or eating until his pockets are empty.
On a good day—on an exceptionally rare day—he’ll keep a few bucks to buy gas
for his moped for the following day.

We’ve tried everything to teach him to be responsible with his allowance. If
we give him all his cash at the beginning of the month, we’ll be paying his
way through the next twenty-nine days. Give him money twice a month and it
only spares us a day or two of him begging for more. Once a week works, but
a few bucks in the morning everyday works best. The trouble is it’s not fun
handing out a tiny allowance to a grown man every morning, especially since
he lives across town.

We used to buy David electronics like televisions, stereos, game machines,
CDs, DVDs and the like. Each year at Christmas and on his birthday we vow
never to buy him electronics again. We’ve yet to keep this vow. What David
has hawked in pawnshops could pay for his college education—if he could
focus long enough to earn a degree. After three failed attempts at college,
I’m convinced he will follow the path of least resistance for the rest of
his life.

The fine individuals at vocational rehabilitation in Utah tried their best,
but David has let them down too many times for them to take him seriously
again. Their latest attempt to better David was to set him up in an
electronics apprenticeship. I thought about giving David a reality check and
telling him how difficult this program would be, but I couldn’t find it in
my heart to dash his hopes. The program takes years to complete and requires
oodles of mathematical skills. I wondered why they thought he could tackle
the program in the first place. Luckily, he lost interest in the program a
week later.

David knows tomorrow will come, but planning for tomorrow is slightly beyond
his capabilities. One would think that he would dread the next day, since he
really can’t plan for it, yet this isn’t the case. David’s thrilled to be
alive and he’s so excited for every fresh new day that it’s almost
impossible for him to get a good night’s sleep. His sleeping habits are more
like that of a typical house cat. In general, a twenty-four hour period for
him is divided between moments of alertness, periodic napping for hours on
end throughout the day, and staying up to all hours of the night.

Dealing with David’s disability income, subsidized housing benefits, and
food stamps is a horrendous nightmare. All three benefits are run by
different governmental agencies requiring fantastical amounts of paperwork.
Even a minute fluctuation in David’s income by way of a job or even the cash
found in his birthday cards could cause his benefits to decrease or be
eliminated altogether. And when he suffers a loss in his income, Gena and I
must foot the bill for him to live until we complete months of paperwork to
reestablish his benefits.

When the government has questions or needs facts there are threats made to
cut benefits for not getting an agency a few bits of information within a
specific deadline. Normally, these requests come by way of a form letter,
dated prematurely, and delivered just days before the response is due. Pity
the person who needs questions answered to meet the deadlines. Try calling
one of the help lines and listening through a recording with fifteen
different options that fails to mention option sixteen—the option you need!

If and when you do get through to a real voice on the phone, expect a
two-month delay from the date you thought the problem would be solved. Next,
plan to take a day off a few weeks later when you realize nothing was solved
and you have to start all over. Take names, write detailed notes, document,
and then push, push, push for the rights of your child, because few will.

And it’s not like David’s trying to bleed the welfare system dry. David
likes to work and wants to work, but his injuries prevent him from
consistently working. He can’t do long hours and he can’t maintain the focus
required of him to hold a job more than a few weeks. His pattern has been
to start a full-time job and in a week or so he’s usually down to part time,
because he can’t handle the workload. Often, this process is not entirely
his fault. In the real world most bosses lack the patience or experience to
deal with the handicapped.

No, David doesn’t want your pity, despite the fact that I've offered a
smattering of reasons as to why you should take pity on him. Here I have
erred and beg your pardon. David is my son; my first born and only son. If
you are a parent or the parent of a handicapped child, perhaps you can
understand my disappointment that David was robbed of a normal life at such
a tender age?