Roger

I was working as an irrigator on a ranch in Southern Oregon. Flood irrigation, which is done by directing water through ditches, allowing gravity to spread it across the pastures, is the method of irrigation we used. My job was to open and close valves and ditches to direct the flow of water and to keep the ditches clear of weeds and other obstructions. During the summer it was a seven day a week job, but I could choose my hours as long at the pastures were kept green.

The year was 1991. I had a 486 computer with a 14.4 k modem through which I connected to Prodigy. Although the Internet was mostly text during those days, and I’d never heard of the World Wide Web, I spent much of my free time browsing Prodigy and AOL, at least when I wasn’t running up $200 phone bills playing Doom via modem, so it was late-almost dark-when I went back to check on the field I was irrigating.

I drove my pickup to where I’d left my tractor parked on the pad-or road-which ran beside the irrigation canal above the field. From where I’d left the tractor, there were two ways to get to the field. One, the safest, was about 200 yards away from where my tractor was parked, but there was a narrow place-just wide enough for the tractor-next to a gully, which was about fifteen feet deep. I’d driven across it many times, and had, when I parked the tractor earlier in the day. I did again, with no problem, when I drove the tractor out onto the field, but while I was out checking the irrigation, it began raining-not much-just enough to wet the ground. I thought nothing of it. This time, however, when I attempted to cross, the tractor tires slipped on the wet ground, dumping me and the tractor into the gully. I landed on my back. The tractor landed upside down, the seat back landing on my pelvis and the front of the tractor temporarily balanced on the exhaust stack, which soon broke. Luckily the tractor rolled away from me, onto its side, but both my pelvis and my testicles were smashed. I could scarcely move. I certainly couldn’t climb out of the gully. I lay there until the foreman discovered me the next morning when he made his rounds.

As they told me later, by then, I was delirious, having been frequently driven into unconsciousness during the night by pain. I didn’t remember anything until I woke up days later in the hospital. Apparently they had kept me sedated. When the doctor thought that I was strong enough, he told me that I might never walk again-and that he had been forced to perform an orchidotomy. It was an unfamiliar term. When I asked him what it meant, he said, “We had to castrate you. There was too much trauma to your testicles. We couldn’t save them.”

I was devastated, but I don’t know which bothered me the most, to never be able to walk, or the loss of my testicles. Now, of course, having lived with both, I would much rather be able to walk, but then, as with many men, much of my self esteem-my identity as a man-was conditional on my being a whole man. Without balls, I no longer knew who I was-whether I was still a man. All I knew was: I didn’t care to go on living.

I was in the hospital for over a month, then in nursing facility for a while, but eventually got a small studio apartment. I received workman’s compensation and then disability. I continued to be depressed, not caring whether I lived or died, but hadn’t enough courage or determination to end my life. At least I had plenty of time to spend on Prodigy. Other than watching TV, there was nothing else for me to do. That’s when I met Roger-while surfing through the disability boards on Prodigy.

At first, I didn’t like him. He was too cheerful. Although he said that he was a quadriplegic, or as he said, “a quad,” he was always joking around, often with a girl, who was also disabled. I had come to the board looking for sympathy and for others who were as miserable as I was. Eventually, he responded to some of my posts and later corresponded with me by email. I learned more about Roger.

Roger, named after the singer of the “Who,” Roger Daltry, was adopted. His parents had given him up at birth because he was born with cerebral palsy. All he could move was his head and two fingers of his left hand. He was aphasic; he couldn’t speak. He had begun communicating when he was two years-old by typing messages on some small electronic device using a stick in his mouth. Now, he used the computer, typing out his messages on the keyboard also using a stick in his mouth. Some of the longer emails he sent me took him as much as four hours to type.

He was fourteen years-old. He had never walked-never talked-and had to be on a ventilator much of the time, yet never showed any sign of self pity. I was fifty. I had children and, until then, a full life. I could speak. I had full use of my arms and hands, but I was full of self pity.

Roger also introduced me to writing. He wrote poetry, unrhymed, freeform poetry. I tried writing some, too. It sucked, but I came to enjoy the attempt, and some people on Prodigy where I posted it, seemed to like some of what I wrote. There was one board called the “Dead Poet’s Society.” Once I posted some of mine and some of Roger’s poetry there, but Roger’s cousin wrote me an email saying, “Please don’t post Roger’s poetry on the ‘Dead Poet’s’ board. Roger has a defective heart. He isn’t expected to live long.”

Although, on the boards, Roger had talked about the times he’d been in the hospital, about what it was like to be in a coma, he had used it to reassure people who had friends or relatives who were in comas. I think that the only thing I ever heard him complain about was the ventilator. He said that it prevented him from sleeping.

His posts were all over the boards at Prodigy. He must have spent hours pecking them out, always reassuring, offering advice and comfort to newly disabled people, even, at times, talking them out of committing suicide. Adults, including me, wrote to this fourteen year-old boy for advice. Although I'd never met him, never had seen a picture of him, I came to love him. He, by his example, had given me a reason to live.

Through my communication with Roger I learned a little about his adoptive parents, too. His father had lost both his legs. They had not only adopted Roger with full knowledge of his condition, but had adopted another severally disabled boy, who, when I was communicating with Roger, had just died. They must be remarkable people, probably largely responsible for Roger being the person he was, but Roger was also intelligent, far more intelligent than most fourteen year-olds. Since Roger was often in pain, often on a ventilator, often in the hospital-in a coma-his parents gave him the choice: whether he wanted to keep fighting for life. He always did. He loved life, even though the quality of his life would be that which most of us couldn’t accept.

One day I had a brief message from Roger. It said, “John: I’m going into the hospital for a while. I’ll be O.K. I’ll write you later. Roger.”

About that time, I dropped Prodigy. They were changing from an unlimited connection service to one where they charged by the hour. Since I also had AOL at the time, I chose to keep it instead. I never heard from Roger again, but heard later that he had never returned from the hospital. He had lost his fight, but not from lack of spirit, or will to live. His heart, although big in so many other ways, finally would no longer sustain his frail body.

If I were to make a list of the most memorable people I’ve ever known, this fourteen year-old boy, who I only knew through words that appeared on my computer monitor, would be at the top of the list. I’ll never forget him. Even now, when I think about him, tears come to my eyes-and it’s been ten years. He’s dead, but maybe a little of him lives on in me, and in others he met-and helped. Today, anytime I begin to feel sorry for myself, I think about Roger-about his example. Despite everything, I no longer have regrets about my life.

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Note: Although the results of the accident are fictionalized, including a castration to satisfy the requirements of the archive, everything else, including all the part about Roger is true. I actually met Roger on Prodigy because another fourteen year-old boy, who was visiting me from Portland, had, because of a congenital defect, become paralyzed while he was visiting me at the ranch outside of Medford. That boy, now a quadriplegic, is still in a wheelchair, but plays wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby. He has two jobs, one of them working for the Oregonian (Portland’s daily newspaper) and lives a full life. Roger helped me deal with my anguish about the boy.

The tractor did slip off into the gully, but had a roll bar which they’d just installed that year. It could either be lowered out of the way to go under obstructions such as trees, or raised and locked in place for protection. I almost never kept it up and locked. It kept getting in the way, but because of something the foreman had said about using it, had it up and locked that day. I was thrown onto the rocks in the gully, landing on my shoulder. The tractor landed directly above me, balanced on the roll bar and the exhaust stack. It stayed there long enough for me to crawl out, then the exhaust stack broke and it rolled onto its side away from me. If the roll bar hadn’t been up, I would probably not be writing any stories.

-Slammr