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Disbelief

Gregory Liffick

    Being unable to move, to speak, or to show any expression, it bothered Phil that no one knew exactly how foul tempered he really was. Everyone assumed that inside of his static, mute exterior lived a saint. That is, if they believed he had any personality at all. But, Phil wasn’t a saint. And he wasn’t inclined to be one.
    If he could make a face, he would make an angry face all of the time. If he could speak, form words, what he would say to people would be unprintable in a family oriented publication. If he could move even one arm and hand, he would slap anyone who came within reach.
    Born with a normal, and possibly above average mind, Phil had felt the this way for as long back as he could remember. During his formative years, one of Phil’s first nurses used to say stupid, condescending things to him, such as, “Oh, he is so special. He is a wonderful, special little boy.” Phil had thought that she was the ‘special’ one. One of the first physical movements he struggled to attempt as a child, without success, was to give her the finger.
    Adding to Phil’s frustration, misery, and to the downfall of his perspective, was that he and his mother were poor, living on assistance and receiving small disability payments for him. Therefore, they were never able to afford one of those cutting edge communication devices that you see in movies of the week on television, the kind that allowed a paralyzed, non-speaking person to communicate electronically by moving their eyes. Phil could move his eyes.
    He got a surprise, though, during one of his daily, silent ruminations on how much he hated everything and everybody. The old dial telephone in their mobile home trailer rang and Phil‘s mother answered it. Phil couldn’t hear the conversation in the next room, but he could see his mother smiling. After a few minutes, she hung up and excitedly raced to Phil’s side. “Phil, Phil! The state is going to pay for one of those electronic communication devices! A brand new one! The social worker finally talked them into it!” she exclaimed. Phil almost liked his mother, at times. She talked to him like he was there, though probably crediting him with the intellect of a fetus.
    It took the device two weeks to be ordered and delivered. A couple of days into the waiting period, Phil had to admit to himself that he was growing cautiously optimistic. When the device arrived, along with a technician/trainer from the company, Phil nearly jumped for joy in his head.
    The technician/trainer spoke only to Phil’s mother, glancing over at Phil sporadically. Phil had the impression that it was up to his mother to train him how to use the device, like training a dog to bark on command by waving a biscuit in front of its nose. Phil swallowed the insult. At least, at last, he might be able to get his reaction to such encounters and many other things off of his chest.
    After an insufferable two hours listening to Phil’s mother and the technician/ trainer talk back and forth, and watching the man demonstrate the device to Phil’s mother again and again, the device was hooked to Phil’s wheelchair and other apparatus was attached to Phil’s head to allow him to operate it by moving his eyes. Having taken in the endless demonstration, Phil began to use it immediately, to his mother’s and the man’s utter surprise.
    The air was thick with anticipation. Out of sight of his mother and the man, Phil moved his eyes frenetically, stringing together words on the device’s screen. Finally, a sentence complete, Phil triggered the voice function with his eyes, the sentence heard in an electronic voice. “Thank you for the talking box, mom, sir...but now you both can take your smiling faces and go straight to hell,” the voice droned. Both of their jaws, and the tools in the man’s hands, dropped.
    Phil thought, frankly, that he been more than polite in his choice of words, especially after all these years of silent suffering.

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