Gimp Day Cookies

Last night was WCMX for Ella, and she insisted on bringing cookies. Monday marked 6 months since she started using a wheelchair, and she wanted to do something fun to remember it with her friends.

“It’s my six month Gimp Day,” she told me matter-of-factly. “I need Gimp Day cookies.”

She’s not making things up. Gimp Day is a thing in the adaptive community. With grown-ups, they usually get together with their friends and have a beer (or other suitable adult beverage) in remembrance of what they’ve lost, what they’ve gained, and where they are today. We didn’t really have a frame of reference for a child’s Gimp Day, as all of her friends are in chairs due to spina bifida or other birth defect rather than an accident or disease.

I picked up the three dozen cookies as she’d requested, even as I found it odd. There was a voice at the back of my head saying “Why are we celebrating this? What kind of people celebrate children becoming handicapped?” I looked at Ella’s delighted face as she carried the cookies into the skate park and started telling people, “It’s my Gimp Day!”

The other people in chairs said, “Happy Gimp Day!” and hugged her before grabbing a cookie. Sure enough, it’s a thing. (Maybe not the cookie part, but certainly the Gimp Day thing.)

As I watched and listened, I began to understand that it’s not about becoming a girl in a wheelchair, but becoming a different person and a part of the community.  A message of Welcome-to-the-club-nobody-wants-to-join-but-we’re-glad-you’re-one-of-us.

I looked at my 15-year-old son, who’d come with us, and said, “I still think it’s weird.”

He laughed and raised an eyebrow. “Really? The woman who delights in making Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday in honor of Jesus’s being crucified because of all the good that came from it, is balking at eating cookies in honor of all the good that’s come from Ella being a paraplegic? Why? Because it’s morbid?”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulder as I laughed with him, because he certainly has a point.

Lots of readers have asked me how they can keep up with Ella and see more pictured of her at the skate park and on the basketball court. You can now follow her on her Facebook page.