Writing in the New York Times the other day, Lindsay Crouse noted that "we don't have many ways left in our culture to be collectively inspired." The Olympics, she thinks, might be one.
When I need inspiration, I think about the Wheelchair Boys.
I met them a few days before the start of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Wheelchair Boys is what they called themselves. Four young men who, three times a week, practiced and worked out in the local YMCA swimming pool.
Around that time I'd finally accepted the sad realization that my pipe dreams of athletic glory, of writing the Great American Novel, of trekking the world, etc., etc., etc., weren't in the cards. Listening to my early middle-aged bellyaching, my wise, elderly neighbor had one day had enough. "Wise up and get a life," he said.
And one morning in July of that year he drove me to the YMCA and introduced me to the Wheelchair Boys.
They all carried oversized boom boxes on their laps and sported shaved heads. I asked Reggie, their leader, why they shaved their heads. He said, "To swim faster." I made the ignorant mistake of asking him, "What for?" He answered with a cold stare.
Their practice routine was this: They were assisted into the pool one-by-one, each to the tune of a recorded song on his boom box (think baseball players' self-chosen so-called "walk-up" songs but long before that became a popular thing). Paul was first. Van Halen's "Jump" blasted as two aides sat him on the pool's edge and splashed water onto his frail body. He shuddered, then stuttered in his off-key holler, "Sssstart cccounting!" That was the aides' cue to lift, swing and on the count of three catapult him into the pool.
