A Little Q & A

Today I went and spoke to a group of fourth graders about living with a disability. The Novi public schools have this program, in which the kids get to spend the morning doing different activities that relate to having a disability, like walking around blindfolded, using a wheelchair, using crutches or a walker, trying to do different activities without using their arms and legs, etc., and then in the afternoon the schools bring in a speaker with a disability to answer the kids’ questions. I was asked to be the speaker a couple of weeks ago, when Charlie, the owner of The Recovery Project, found out he wasn't going to be able to participate this year.
So after therapy today I drove over from Livonia to the elementary school in Novi. I told the kids who I was, how I got hurt, and a little about what I was doing now to try and get better, and then I opened up the floor for questions. The kids asked a lot of interesting questions. Most of the questions were basic, "how do you do this and that" kinds of questions, and when I would explain one thing a bunch more hands would go up because that made them think of questions about other stuff. That is, until I got this one:
"How would you feel if you hadn't gotten hurt?"
Um…Jeez...is it Caleb (that wasn’t actually his name; that was another kid’s name. His was Dylan, or Maxwell, or something. I couldn’t see the nametag)? Did you say, "How would I feel if I hadn’t got hurt?" Well…I…I don't know, Confucius, that's a tough one. I have a pretty good answer for the one about the trees. Do you want to ask that instead? I mean, I'm pretty sure a tree makes a sound when it falls in the woods, or at least the motion of the tree falling disturbs the air molecules around the trunk and that disruption of energy is transferred in a wave-like motion that my ears would pick up, regardless of whether I was there or not. That's just basic physics.
But I don't know. If I hadn’t been hurt, I really can only speculate on how I would feel now. But that begs the question, "How do we know what we might feel about something, if we don't know anything about the thing that hasn’t yet happened?" And now I'm just answering a hypothetical question with another hypothetical question, which gets us nowhere. Something tells me you want a more definitive answer, seeing as your last question was, "How do you brush your teeth?"*
This reminds me of the time Mitch Albom asked me to summarize the ethical pros and cons of stem cell therapy at the end of a three-minute radio interview.** You didn’t happen to catch that by any chance? Did you? No? But I digress…
I mean, I'm not really sure you're asking me what I think you're asking, nor am I sure that you’re sure you're asking what you think you're asking…; Do you understand what I'm saying? Then again, maybe I’m underestimating Novi's fourth-grade philosophy curriculum.
Well, I guess my answer is—and this doesn’t really answer your question—but all I can say for sure is that I can only tell you what I know now that I didn't know then. OK?
Now, who’s got a question about wheelchairs?
* electric toothbrush with a modified, loop handle
** see Patient Update dated 3/01/05