Bar-B-Que Tongs, Sadistic Jenga and Bin Shelves

I’m not sure I’ve returned from my trip down memory lane last week when I wrote a brief summary of all the places I have lived in my relatively short life.  Unsure if it were “appropriate” to post a 3000 word rambling about my childhood home  I limited myself to about half that in last week’s post.  However I’m not doing a very good job at winning my internal battle over the length of my trip to the past.  Consider this a white flag of surrender.

      The dwellings we grow up in have a profound impact on who we become I believe, but that’s not an entirely new idea.  My big old yellow how certainly shaped me and I helped shape it, much to my parents’ dismay at times.  My wheelchair has an extended front end to support my unbending legs.  Since my chair has about the same maneuverability as a Mac truck tight turns can be troublesome.  Try as I might sometimes I just couldn’t help but ding a wall and put a gouge in the sheetrock.  From a young age I knew how to work drywall compound with a trowel to smooth out my dents on the wall.  When I was a young teen I was driving particularly carelessly and did more than put a small dig in the wall – it was a hole.  At that time in my life I had a little Duct Tape Accessories business going called “Just Ducky”.  Duct Tape wallets, purses, lunch bags, and messenger bags were big sellers in middle school, and I made enough profit to keep me stocked in rolls of tape of the latest colors.  To “fix” the hole I put in the wall I used some white Duct Tape and meticulously vacuumed up the sheetrock dust.  In my opinion it looked pretty legit and to this day I’m not exactly sure how long I was able to conceal that hole from my parents.  All I know is I didn’t fill it in with compound until we hosted the rehearsal dinner for my brother’s wedding my senior year of high school.

      Kitchens are always a tricky area for people in chairs.  It seems like everything is out of our reach.  The fact that my front end stuck out so much really made reaching things challenging, especially when it came to the refrigerator.  When I was a young child I’m told that I would literally climb into the refrigerator to reach things.  My mom retells the story of when she caught me sitting in the refrigerator eating chocolate cake.  When she asked me what I was doing in there I simply responded “I couldn’t reach the cake” as if it were an obvious choice to sit in the refrigerator instead of asking someone for help.  Something tells me that if I didn’t ask for help it means I probably didn’t have permission to help myself to the cake.  Guess I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. 

The freezer had all the same challenges as the refrigerator with the added bonus of things being over my head.  Anyone who has used one of those Gopher Grabbers, the kind with the little suction cups on the end knows that they pretty much worthless.  My father brought one home for me and about a week later I had it in the trash can broken.  Liking my independence, and a challenge I would often look for other household objects that could help elongate my reach.  When it came to the kitchen my favorite tool was the bar-b-que tongs.  They were metal which made them sturdy, and I could manipulate them with one hand which meant I could use my free hand to catch whatever happened to fall.  I say catch but what I mean is block myself from getting hit with miscellaneous canned goods and boxed brownie mixes.  My parents knew I relished my independence and would often leave me home alone.  Not in an unhealthy, “call social services” sort of way, but in a “she’s more than capable of taking care of herself and we have lives” way.  That being said I cooked a lot of frozen foods since I had a difficult time reaching the stove (I was great with an oven and microwave though).  On rare occasions our freezer was organized and I could with some ease reach the food I wanted with the aid of the bar-b-que tongs.  However let’s be real, freezers are usually a Pandora’s Box with odd shaped bags and boxes stacked like a sadistic Jenga game.  I can remember (which is pretty shocking) several times trying to get a frozen meal out and having frozen chicken breasts rained down on my head.  Have you ever been hit in the head with frozen meat?  Frozen meat is hard – luckily you can use it as an ice pack to numb the pain away, and then cook it up for dinner once you can see straight.  When I went off to college my folks got a side by side fridge and freezer thinking that it would be better for me.  Was I able to reach things better?  Yes, marginally, but there is much less storage space in those models.  It was nice being able to get ice and water from the door with ease.  I think my parents were just happy I could reach their ice cream sandwiches so I could fetch them during commercial breaks of American Pickers.

When I was 14 years old I desperately wanted to redo my bedroom, then again what teenage girl doesn’t?  However there were some specific things I wanted done.  I had abandoned using a traditional dresser a few years earlier and started using shelves.  Dresser drawers were very difficult for me to use with my chair.  My folks picked up some cabinets from a big box store but they weren’t very sturdy.  Also my desk was always covered in stuff because I only used it as a drop zone because I didn’t have enough room to pull under it and sit.  Having a very keen interest in architecture and floor plans I drew, to scale a floor plan I believed would work.  I also designed some simple furniture that I was sure my dad could build.  I gave my dad the plans, and knew that it would most likely be several years until my vision was carried out.  However much to my surprise my family decided to do an Extreme Home sort of thing one weekend while I was away with our church youth group.  They called and if it would be ok with me if they did the work while I was away.  Knowing that I had very specific plans drawn and even had paint colors picked I said yes.  When I got home I was amazed with my new room.  I still use my “bin shelf” (wooden three shelf unit with canvas bins) as my dresser.  If I had known that the work would get done so quick I would have drawn the plans years before – haha.

Although my environment wasn’t always the most accessible it forced me from a young age to learn to adapt, a skill that I’m sure will continue to take me far in life.  Perhaps that is why I’m not as easily frustrated by certain things.  I am able to see a new and exciting challenge where others just see a brick wall.  The safe and comfortable environment of my childhood home gave me an opportunity to establish “creative” ways of making inaccessible or out of reach things work.  It instilled a “make it work” mindset long before Tim Gunn made it a catch phrase.  I also learned that if you need help you have to ask, which at times I think I’m still learning.  If your family can’t read your mind strangers certainly aren’t going to be able to.  A lot can be learned simply by doing life.  Time for me to stop rambling and do some life.