Once upon a time, when I was some nine years old, we had a new boy on the bus to primary school. He had the biggest eyes any of us had ever seen and was grinning wider than the Cheshire cat as his mother carried him up the steps and settled him in a seat across the aisle. Someone must have waved at him, because he was soon waving back with both hands and telling anyone who would listen that his name was Boy, he was in grade four, and he'd had polio.
Of course, we knew what polio was (or at least thought we knew). The morbidly curious among us had seen pictures of iron lungs in our encyclopedias. And here was Boy, with his uniform trousers cut in half and his legs held together with steel, incandescent with glee at the fact that I was in the same class as him. "My legs don't work," he was telling us, while the poor conductor tried to shush all the excited chattering into something more tolerable. "See, that frame is keeping my legs straight."
Before recess ended that morning, Boy had methodically beaten twenty-five fourth graders at what we called "hand-cricket" and had won every piece of chocolate we had smuggled into class for the midmorning munchies. It was embarrassing. Our parents would never believe us if we told them that a small, bug-eyed boy with polio could eat more chocolate in a single day than the rest of us were allowed to in a month (though not before laying into us for smuggling all that chocolate to school in the first place). Nor would they believe us about being allowed to take more chocolate to school ("I'm sure his parents and doctor know exactly how much sugar he can reasonably eat. You're not feeding him any more.")
It was also the start of a great friendship, and he'd introduced me to his mother on the school bus home that very afternoon. She had her son's wide grin as she apologised on Boy's behalf for the candy. I think she was secretly proud of the absolute menace that she'd raised her son into.
And boy, was he a menace. He'd find ways to weasel free snacks from the school cafeteria (well, the poor cafeteria lady couldn't really refuse his baby cow face); he routinely won our allowances and candy from us one way or another, and the teachers seemed to tolerate more sass from him than they did from any of the rest of us. "It's how he gets his extra energy out," one particularly nice teacher explained. "He can't exactly run around playing football like you now, can he?"
Our school wasn't built for little boys with polio. There were stairs placed in doorways (one stair for classroom doors and two stairs into the bathrooms) and no elevators or ramps, meaning you'd need to climb stairs to get about anywhere in the building. And so, there was a fleet of janitors and teachers carrying Boy around to wherever he needed to be, while we followed them like we were the emperor's procession of guards and servants.
And nobody hated the arrangement more than Boy did: "Do you know how hard it is to find someone who'd carry me to the loo and help me out every time I need to go?" Fair point. He had a couple of emergencies in his first few weeks, at least until they found someone his parents would pay extra to do exactly that.
The people who built the school obviously never thought of wheelchair users. Or the fact that we all knew at least one kid who fell off wet stairs in bathrooms and broke a limb every single year. Not that there were any systems in place to do anything concrete about it, except perhaps go to a school that's more wheelchair-friendly — or at least one that doesn't place stairs in bathroom doors.
Appalling as all of that sounds to me at twenty-seven years old, we definitely weren't listening to our teachers at nine when they kept telling us not to run up and down staircases or round and round the bathroom in our uniform shoes. And nobody was listening to our teachers when they kept telling the admin wing to line the bathroom stairs with rubber or something. Apparently, rubber lining, ramps, and practical uniform shoes made for actual six to ten-year-olds looked ugly and did not fit the school's aesthetic.
Until, on a fine morning right before summer break, there was a ruckus in a corner of the playground at recess. Boy had apparently tossed himself off the bench he was watching us from. "I stood up," he was telling the poor janitor who was trying to get him off the ground. "Did you see that? I stood up."
He had, very likely, grabbed the nearest kid and tried to leverage himself upwards with whatever arm strength he had. Until that is, the kid spooked and let him topple onto his backside before realising exactly what was going on and calling for help. Boy did not have a scratch on him, and from what he told us, nothing hurt. His parents kept him home for the next couple of days anyway, probably to let his doctors take a look at him. But the next time the school bus stopped at his front door, his mother was helping him up by his armpits and had put him on his feet.
For the few seconds it took us to count to five. And then he was back in the chair he started from, waiting for the conductor to carry him onto the bus. Well, the conductor did not try to shush our cheering that morning, even if he'd likely have a solid headache by the time we got off the bus at school. He did, however, remind us not to run up and down the aisle while the bus was still moving.
We did not stop trying to stand Boy up and drag him around for the rest of the week, and at some point, he did ask us to cut it out (probably from falling over all the times we couldn't hold him up long enough to get him into a chair). But by the time we were back from summer break, he was standing up for longer and promising to smoke the lot of us in football before we got to middle school next year. He probably would've smoked us in football as soon as he could run around with us, but his legs weren't getting better as fast as he'd like them to.
It took him three months of standing with support (and loads of physical therapy, in hindsight) for him to stand on his own. His mother had put him on his feet and let him go as the school bus pulled up to his door one morning, and he wobbled for seven whole seconds before finally plopping back into his chair. Another odd month later, that was thirty whole seconds.
But Boy thought he should've been doing better. He was four months into fifth grade and could only stand up for a little less than a minute. Bonus point: he could now stumble half a step forward before his legs gave out from under him, but that wasn't the same as playing football now, was it?
His doctors had expressly forbidden him from overexerting himself, and we found out when his mother explained why we weren't allowed to stand him up and drag him around for more than fifteen minutes a day. He was probably allowed more time on his feet, but he needed that for his physical therapy. Not that we knew that, of course, nor did we appreciate the fact that we weren't allowed to help him walk as much as we wanted to.
Well, if Boy were a lesser menace to primary school society, he wouldn't try to stand up and walk by himself now that we weren't allowed to help him. But he did. One rainy afternoon, he levered himself off his chair using the nearest kid willing to help him, let go of the kid's arm, and took two steps forward. And then, he tripped over his own feet onto playground dirt and skinned a knee. He was laughing his little head off while the rest of us cheered. We'd all be in big trouble for ruining our uniforms in the rain and letting him get hurt, but it was worth it.
"Did you see that?" He was shouting, "I can walk! Did you see that?"
He went on to promise us that we were so smoked in football, though we did not get to watch him get there. He could walk about ten steps by himself and some fifteen with help by the time we finished fifth grade, and then his family moved away. They couldn't help it. His father worked for a major bank, and they moved him to a location halfway across the country. It took us about another half year before we lost touch. Their parents changed their phone numbers, and we now had new friends taking up most of our time and attention.
The next time I saw Boy was on a rainy Saturday sixteen years later, in the elevator of an apartment building where I was visiting an old friend on a rare visit home. I did not even recognise him until he smiled his trademark Cheshire at me. He walked me to my friend's flat and made me promise him a game of football when I was done visiting her. He'd just moved back to the city with a new job and reconnected with three other people from our primary school class. He was going to enlist them in our game of football.
It was slightly late in the evening and pouring by the time the five of us gathered at the parking lot. We marked a part of the fence for goalposts, promoted the least athletic of us to goalie, and kicked off in teams of two. Over the next three hours of switching teammates to play makeshift football, he had successfully smoked every single one of us, just as he had promised us a decade and a half ago.
We were soaked through by the time we made it back to his flat. His wife had been kind enough to hold on to our stuff for us and inform our families we'd be sleeping over in their living room. The rest of the night was spent in borrowed jammies, drinking and laughing over tales of what we'd been up to all these years. His wife was particularly delighted at the tale of how Boy learned to walk for the first time after he'd got polio. She knew the story, of course, but she'd wanted to hear our version of it.
As we waited for our Uber rides home in the morning, Boy pointed to a group of children roughhousing as their school bus came to a stop and said, "Do you see that?" He was smiling. And for a single moment, he was ten years old again, in a heap on the playground dirt with a skinned knee, laughing his head off and yelling, "Did you see that? I can walk!"
It's been almost a year since we met in that elevator, and I pay him and his wife a visit every time I'm in town. And each time I need to leave, I nod once in Boy's direction instead of saying any traditional goodbyes: "I see you, Boy. And I'll see you again."