Incontinence, Ejaculation, and Learning to Hang

I was raised in a family that never discussed bodily functions. In fact, my mom still won’t acknowledge the fact that anyone pees except in the quietest whisper. Not even babies. It makes me laugh to watch her face as she walks across the room, newborn in her arms, to whisper to his/her mom, “I think the baby might be…

(whispers)wet."

She always whispers it, because heaven forbid anyone knows that babies might be wet or stinky. It’s the way that she was raised, and the way that she raised her own children. There are lines of decorum that we simply don’t cross, and things we never discuss in public. I learned at a very young age that people who talked about peeing and pooping, and heaven forbid they should call them peeing and pooping, were just plain vulgar. Heck, I’ve given birth eight times, and am still made squeamish by birth stories. I’m not a fan of over sharing.

I can remember one date in high school where I had to pee so badly I was almost in tears, but I couldn’t bring myself to say so. So I came up with a story of how I wanted to walk around the amusement park we were at while he stood in line, just so I could “look around.” That poor guy. I don’t know what he thought I was really doing, but he never asked me out again.Too bad, because he was cute and nice, and I’m pretty sure that we could still be friends if I wasn’t such a weirdo back in the day.

That’s how much I was taught to not discuss these things. Seriously.

And that’s become the hardest part for me of adjusting to be a part of the wheelchair/adaptive community. They discuss everything, y’all. People think that I don’t have a filter, but they raise my eyebrows and make me blush every time I’m around them.

It’s become predictable that the second or third question after we meet a new person and discuss “why is Ella in a chair” is going to be “Is she Incontinent?” (She isn’t, thank goodness.) It’s asked in the same tone of voice as the kid at the grocery asks me if I want paper or plastic, and yet it throws me off balance every time.

Because who asks that of a stranger? I have friends who’ve had tribes of children and only admit to leaking “a little when I laugh” to their closest friends. If your bits don’t work right, that’s private. Unless you’re in a wheelchair and then it’s as common as asking what you do for a living.

“Hi. What’s your name? What’s your daughter’s name? Why is she in a chair? Does she pee on herself?” Okay…they say incontinent, but that’s what they mean. It’s just so foreign to me.

A couple of nights ago, we went out to dinner with some new friends of ours, some of whom are disabled. It wasn’t very long into the conversation about how their lives are different before one of the men volunteered “my biggest issue at the moment is my hormone levels because I don’t ever fully ejaculate.”

I blushed brilliantly red, and my eyes got huge. Who says that? Apparently everyone, because the guy across the table piped up with “Yeah, I struggle with that too. Here’s how I handle that…”

As this discussion went on, my friend at the end of the table started laughing, “Dude, look at Rebecca’s face. We shocked the walker.”

There was a lot of good-natured ribbing before the guy next to me patted my hand and reassured me, “You’re still new. You’ll get used to us before too long.”

That’s what I hear a lot, “It’s okay. You’re still new.”

And I am. I’m so very new in a whole world that doesn’t follow any social rules that I know. It’s a world populated by the kindest souls and most generous people I’ve ever met, and I’m trying hard to be comfortable with a frankness that they take for granted. Because, as one of the guys told me on Wednesday night –  if I’m going to hang with the crips, then I’m first  going to have to learn how to hang.