GregKidd

It’s hard to allow oneself to be too mired in self-focused sadness when your father suffered harder and did far more.

I found Greg’s school certificate issued in 1966. At 16, having lost the capacity to do anything he loved any more, isolated hundreds of kilometres away from his family and home, he borrowed a typewriter and completed three subjects by correspondence on a typewriter with a stick and limited mobility.

He wrote of that time:

“In March, shortly after Noela learned she would be remaining in S7 for yet another rotation, she assisted me with a belated enrolment in some Year 10 studies that would be completed by ‘correspondence’. My three subjects, English, Mathematics
and Geography, demanded a huge time commitment, so the staff reserved my OT timeslot for schoolwork.

To provide any-hour access to a typewriter that would ensure my completed assignments were legible, Noela loaned me her portable typewriter.

What a boon it was! Thank you, Noela.”

“A setback –
The exciting study adventure was threatened with derailment when I scalded myself in the shower.

Having been left unattended in a stall, with the taps turned off while the orderly responded to a call for assistance elsewhere, I grew impatient. I turned on the taps and adjusted the water temperature. Steaming water cascaded across my lap and drained away under the seat. I panicked and yelled for help. Two orderlies appeared instantly and turned off the taps. When they lifted me
back into bed, they discovered a boomerang-shaped scald on my left hip and buttocks.

Professor Sutton confined me to bed, a pillow bed. It consisted of a bank of pillows that
extended from bedhead to footboard, not in the usual position of flat side down but all standing on their long edge. Two orderlies lifted on top of them. Here I spent two and a half months being turned every two hours from right side to stomach and back again.

The staff propped lesson manuals in positions that allowed me to read from them. They also indulged my ongoing calls for the turning of pages, as well as for the loading of paper into the typewriter – after I had taught myself to type, using my right hand, while lying face-down.

I was proud of my typing accomplishment because I could not otherwise have kept up with my assignments. Ironically, I pushed well ahead of schedule.”

I now have that typewriter because of the ABC channel television show “Can We Help?”

If he can do that at 16, I can do this at 42.