Illustration by Drew Shannon
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
I get heckled when I walk the streets of my neighbourhood. Usually by young people in cars. The derisive comments are occasionally unintelligible:
“Hey Jerry, if you wanna shred the gnar, you gotta head north!” or, “Must have been one helluva yard sale!” or, “Nothing left in the quiver?”
I’ve done the Googling. “Shredding the gnar” is skiing, a “Jerry” is an idiot skier, a “quiver” is one’s collection of skis and a “yard sale” is a ski wipeout where you lose all your equipment.
But most of the time I get simple English like, “Where are your skis, old man? Ha Ha Ha!” Unfortunately, the key part of my response, “I shoved them up the … (car roars away) … of the last punk that asked me that,” often gets drowned out.
I am not a skier. But I do wear a pair of old ski goggles while walking in the winter, particularly when there’s a cold north wind accompanying sub-zero temperatures. They keep my eyes and upper cheeks warm. If I still lived in Winnipeg, I suspect I’d get less grief. But my daily walk takes me up and down sidewalks from Bloor to Dundas in the west end of Toronto. That may not sound like the Iditarod, but hear me out.
The invisible math of chronic illness is a daily challenge
I am cold all the time. I have heart failure. I would rather not be walking. The desire to stop, bend over and gasp is always there but must be ignored. Why? Because my sadistic, drill sergeant – formally qualified as a cardiologist – wants me to do an hour a day without stopping for a rest. I can’t yet go that long, but I’m trying, and anything that makes the ordeal more comfortable, like keeping the cold out of my eyes, is something I’m going to do.
There is also danger involved in the daily trudge. Nearly five years ago, in this column, I described a serious cardiac event I had while walking. Shortly after that, I was told that, given the results of exercise-testing, I had a 50-per-cent chance of being dead in two years. Well, I’m still here and still pounding the pavement. I shouldn’t be verbally abused; I should be held up as a shining example of perseverance and determination. As I told my wife the other day, for a guy in my situation, a 50-minute winter walk is a cold-weather, physical challenge comparable to anything undertaken by Roald Amundsen or Ernest Shackleton.
“Sure, Jerry,” she replied. “And I suppose your struggle to get up the stairs to bed is comparable to Sir Edmund Hillary conquering Everest.”
“Yes it is,” I pointed out. “But maybe it would be a little less like Everest if you’d let me turn up the thermostat.”
Actually, I like the Everest analogy. Those 14 stairs are intimidating and I break the ascent up into two stages. There is a landing nine stairs up – advanced base camp – where I acclimatize for a moment, before summitting and gasping up all the rarified air I can. Again, I should have a medal pinned on me for my triumphing over adversity. But I get the opposite.
An unexpected connection at a bus shelter left a lasting impression on me
The ridicule I experience is discrimination on the basis of disability. My limitations may not be apparent to the comedians in cars, but that’s no excuse. Society is rightly educating itself about mental illness, which is often hidden from view. How about a day where everyone walks with goggles on to raise awareness for all hidden disabilities?
I thought my predicament would resonate with my younger daughter, being of the social-media generation, with all its anonymous insulting and bullying. But she wasn’t impressed.
“Let’s face it, Dad. As a teenager, you’d have done a drive-by heckle on a goofy old guy on the street wearing ski goggles. Get a sense of humour.”
I was going to respond that I respected my elders, but then I remembered, as a kid, sneaking into the backyards of the weird old guys in the neighbourhood and stealing their rhubarb and crabapples. As for my disability argument, my daughter’s view was that no one was discriminating against any hidden disability; the comments I was getting were appropriate responses to my fashion sense.
My goggles will stay on and any jibes that come my way will be considered karma for my youthful rhubarb transgressions. A more concerted effort will be made to get my walking time up to drill-sergeant standards. I’ll even try to stop hating every minute of it. Maybe then I’ll see the humour in it.
Rudy Buller lives in Toronto.