Man and Machine

There was a loud crash, and the man put his arms out in front of him as his wheelchair toppled sideways and fell over.  He saw it coming I’m sure, but I was shocked as I saw it go down.  Even though he crossed his arms in front of his face because he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to fall, it still looked like a pretty heavy landing, and since he was wearing a seatbelt, the chair clunked over with him.  To me, it looked like a die toss in slow motion.  He gave out a curse in a heavy Quebecois accent, more annoyed than hurt.

And then a player from the British Columbia team wheeled over.  The Quebecois player put his hands out and, using a technique akin to the way that a kykers might help another overturned kyaker to get him back upright, they got the job done.  And though the BCer was the reason why the Quebeccer had gone down in the first place, they shook hands, and the game was on.

Yesterday was my first time watching a game of wheelchair basketball.  It was part of some paraolympics promotion going on, and it was the final match between British Columbia and Quebec.  And even if predictions were that by 2010 we’d have cyborg Terminators clunking around tearing shit up, as I looked at the basketball court in front of me, I couldn’t help but think that the future was here, and it wasn’t so grim after all.  I mean, there it was: man and machine, together.  Dribbling.  Deeking.  Scoring three point shots.

I was thinking to myself, jeezus christ, I can’t even score three point shots, and I have LEGs.

I remember reading something in an old manga, I think it was Gunnm, where the lead character’s Panzer Kunst (the martial arts style of martians) was discussed.  The discussion specified that the style was the best style for use against humanoids, cyborg, android or human– because as much as martial arts taught you about offense and deffense, the assumption was that the opponent had a similar physiology to you, even if their size might be different within certain limits.  Anyway, I mention this because I tend to think within that framework of a ‘whole’ person, physically; motions like crawling, walking, running, jumping, I understand them only in terms of my own physiology, which happens to be similar to that of most of the general population.

But have you ever seen a person in a wheelchair hop laterally?  Have you ever seen a person in a wheelchair use a spin move to deffend a basketball, then breakaway and perform a layup?  It’s something totally interesting to see because while I understand that this here basketball should go into this here net, the mechanics of the bodies in this game are so astoundingly different from anything I’m used to that it really, really only seems impossible.

03/05/2009 11:06:22 PM Jinryu SiB i went to see that basketbal game this afternoon, and man, those mofos are GOOD
03/05/2009 11:06:23 PM Jinryu SiB i was like
03/05/2009 11:06:24 PM Jinryu SiB OMG
03/05/2009 11:06:28 PM Jinryu SiB they don’t even have fucking legs
03/05/2009 11:06:34 PM Jinryu SiB they’re better than ME
03/05/2009 11:06:37 PM SiB Jinryu hahaha
03/05/2009 11:06:44 PM Jinryu SiB i’m so serious!
03/05/2009 11:06:56 PM Jinryu SiB like, in … er… ‘standup’ basketball
03/05/2009 11:07:08 PM Jinryu SiB you see that people use fancy footwork and spins to feint an opponent
03/05/2009 11:07:11 PM Jinryu SiB and then pass on another side?
03/05/2009 11:07:15 PM Jinryu SiB these guys do it in fucking chairs!
03/05/2009 11:07:18 PM Jinryu SiB WHILE dribbling!
03/05/2009 11:07:36 PM Jinryu SiB they might dribble with the right hand, for example, and then push/pull wheels with the left hand
03/05/2009 11:07:53 PM Jinryu SiB and when there’s fouls in wheelchair basketball, chairs freaking crash
03/05/2009 11:07:57 PM Jinryu SiB and people fly over
03/05/2009 11:08:02 PM SiB Jinryu lol!
03/05/2009 11:08:03 PM Jinryu SiB it’s more like bumper cars
03/05/2009 11:08:13 PM Jinryu SiB they even have pit stops
03/05/2009 11:08:17 PM Jinryu SiB to replace broken wheels and shit

I’ve always been kind of injury prone due to my lifestyle. In my younger days (pre-26 years old, in any case) I used to boast jokingly that I had a mutant healing factor, because I’d always recover from injuries pretty quickly.  (Speaking of mutants, Wolverine: Origins was total garbage.)  But regardless of how injured I’ve ever gotten, I have a very keen aversion to getting seriously injured.  Just last friday, I hurt my neck really bad at Numac, to the point where I couldn’t get out of bed the next morning and had to pop a few pills of ibuprofen– I’d not used painkillers since I was in highschool and had my wisdom teeth removed.  During a new method of arm bar escape that I was using, I kept getting myself caught in an omoplata, and the escape roll for that turned out badly a couple of times, resulting in me injuring my neck.  It’s a recurrent injury I think, because it hurts in all the same ways as it did when I was last seriously injured in taekwondo back in November of 2008.

There are few people who respect injuries as much as I do, and I say that very seriously, despite that many of my non-martial-arts friends think that I’m crazy.  I’ve always held that injury, be it physical or otherwise, is part of being a sportsman.  And being a sportsman is as much about the sport as it is about being a human being.  Nevertheless, I’ve always held back to a certain extent because I’ve always feared something like being in a wheelchair– losing one of my limbs?  That thought seems to be insane.  That isn’t being injured– that’s becoming crippled.  That’s becoming handicapped.

Now that I’ve seen what a person in a wheelchair can do though, I’m not so worried.  I mean, I realize that these are some elite players, but one thing is certain– there is no difference between the fighting spirit of a man who is physically whole versus a man who isn’t.  I suppose that should be obvious, but to me, it wasn’t until yesterday.