I ordered these slippers to wear around the house and in the lobby so as not to upset management although you can’t disguise the wheelchair.
I also have a new shower chair and although I believe I can take a shower on my own, they want to start by having a blue coat around just to make sure I don’t fall.
Frankly, there is more chance of falling if they get the wrong bluecoat, but whatever.
As far as outside shoes go, there are a bunch of deck shoes that will work, and after all, I’m going out in the wheelchair so they don’t need to be comfortable for walking.
I am trying to remember if I ever owned slippers before. I have a vision of brown leather slippers trying to creep into my brain, and even a plaid bathrobe, but then a pipe appears in my cortex, and an ascot and I realize that I’m seeing Hugh Hefner on a tv show he had for a while which I think was called after dark.
He would appear with a playmate on his arm, in a smoking jacket, and usually there were tons of bunnies around, and jazz players, tho I think I once saw Linda Ronstadt do two numbers. One of which was “You’re No Good.”
It was no easy task to watch that show because there was only one portable tv in the house, a Sony portable, and my mother had it on her night table. She always went to bed with one ear plug in her left ear, on her side, watching or listening to repeats of MASH. I think it was at 11p.m.
And it was a double bed, my father on the other side, usually asleep by then.
Their bedroom adjoined the kitchen, separated by a heavy white swinging door. So around 10:30, I would peek through the crack in the swinging door, pushing it in a bit.
Often, I was too late because my little sister (Nancy) was already in there and was in the process of removing the ear plug from mom’s ear without waking her.
Mom would complain in her sleep, “what are you doing?” sometimes and Nancy would stand there frozen, and see me peeking in from the kitchen.
This removal of the tv was as difficult as stealing a jewel guarded by laser beams with Tom Cruise repelling down ropes.
My father was a light sleeper.
My mother was addicted to the night shows.
The antenna had to be lowered quietly so it wouldn’t hit anything.
The tv was plugged into a Medusa head of extension wires.
My mother liked fresh air, and we were near the hospital. At any moment a siren could come up Gunhill Road and wake her up.
It was a caper. Sometimes we made it out okay and I got to watch the guy in the ascot surrounded by bunnies and sometimes Nancy got to watch repeats of I Love Lucy. And sometimes my father got up to go to the toilet and caught one of us with the t.v. and took it back.
You see, t.v. was considered a paramount evil in our house. My father had us make a schedule and put it 0n the kitchen wall, near the peeking door. One hour a night. That was it.
And choose your show carefully. There was censorship as well.
I will tell you that as many schedules he put up, it only made t.v. more desirable. And once we were on our own, tv ruled. I told you, for one thing I ended up in Film School. And my sister was a video director in college for a year or so. There is an epigram by Oscar Wilde for this phenomena but I need to go watch the hearings now (if that’s what they’re called.)
BECK 