Today, I finished reading The Point of it All by Charles Krauthammer. The first anniversary of his death is just around the corner in June. I became aquainted with Charles while watching Fox News. He appeared daily on Bret Baier’s news show. Krauthammer’s analysis and opinions alway impressed me. He spoke with knowledge and conviction. It never mattered what the subject was he spoke eloquently on the topic.
On the very first day I watched him I noticed something about the way he breathed. It reminded me of my polio days when many of my friends breathed funny because their polio affected their chest muscles. In all the years I watched him I never spotted anything like a wheelchair or saw his arms or hands move. Much later when curiosity got the best of me I searched the internet for information about him and learned that he was paralyzed from the chest down. Injured in a diving accident as a student.
Charles never let his handicap interfere with his life. Same with me. He moved forward the best he could with his affirmity. It is strange when positive people have accidents or terribly crippling events in their lives the terribleness never stops them from moving on with life. In my case my dream was to play football in high school. All through my fevered period when the virus spread through my body I kept thinking I have to beat this thing and get to tryouts. A couple of months later the realization that I wasn’t going to make the tryouts hit me, and I shifted gears to learn how to swallow. Swallowing doesn’t sound like much but when the muscles involved in making that normal function stop working your life is on hold. Thankfully, the medicine of the day was advanced enough to thread a feeding tube through my nose into my stomach, and I lived.
It took weeks to learn how to walk and to keep my head from rolling around like it was attached with a slinky. It took months to learn how to smile, and longer to learn how to swallow, All through this rehab I never wavered from getting back to school, but football left my mind.
Charles didn’t allow his paralysis beat him from reaching his goal, he became a doctor, a Psychiatrist. He practiced for a number of years before quitting to become a writer. He died a writer, and a damned good one too.
The problem I have with books like his is that they force me to have to think. That means reading the book is no longer a pleasure it is an effort. Big words, new phraseology of big words all slow me down, and sometimes put me to sleep. Charles succeeded in giving me a nap several times during this read, but it didn’t stop me from completing the book.
He makes so much sense in his thinking, and he is a conservative too. I would have loved to watch a debate between him and the most liberal debater on earth, that is, if one could be found.
Filed under: Book Review, Conservative, family | Tagged: Handicap, Paralysis, Polio |
No contest. Liberal debaters are master baiters, but they don’t make much sense.