My name is Peter Bowling Anderson and I worked in Fort Worth, Texas for five years as a caregiver/tutor for a man with cerebral palsy named Richard Herrin. It was the best job I ever had, and I learned many valuable insights and lessons from Richard during our years together. I decided to write a book about our time together, and it’s called Life at 8 mph: How a Man with Cerebral Palsy Taught Me the Secret to Happiness. It was recently published, and the following is the opening excerpt from the book. Meet Mr. Persistent, Richard Herrin…
The only thing I knew for certain was I didn’t want to work for him. It took me all of two minutes to reach that conclusion.
I’d come to Richard Herrin’s small, two-bedroom duplex on Wheaton Street, just around the corner from a nearly empty Chinese restaurant and a packed Whataburger, because I needed a job, any job, and I was desperate. I’d been in Fort Worth for over a month, with nothing panning out. I needed a full-time job to cover my bills, yet something kept nixing each prospect leaving me increasingly dispirited. One day in the lounge of my roommate’s graduate school, I saw a notice for a tutoring job. The position was only for ten hours a week, so I grabbed a tab and forgot about it until that night when emptying my pockets. After another unsuccessful day of job hunting, I thought it might be time to adopt a different strategy. I read the tab again: REV. RICHARD HERRIN SEEKS TUTOR, 10 HOURS WEEKLY, GRADUATE STUDIES. I knew
of another part-time job I thought I could get, and I was just starting to play in a band in Dallas. Perhaps between the three jobs, I’d be okay.
I called the number on the tab, and a severely slurred voice answered. I said, “Hello,” hoping the connection would clear.
Yet I heard the same, garbled, indecipherable response. This wasn’t a poor connection. Somewhere inside me, the first alarm rang out. There would be many more. I tried saying hello again, but was met with a string of slurred speech that overwhelmed me. I considered hanging up, before I heard the first word I understood: “Richard.”
I introduced myself and told him I’d seen his job notice, and I asked if he’d like to meet. What I really wanted to ask was what was wrong with him because I couldn’t follow a word he was saying.
But then I heard it – the second word I understood – and this one made a much more profound impact on me than his name.
“Palsy.”
I almost dropped the phone, partly because I feared it might be contagious through the connection (I was a bit of a germaphobe, to say the least), and partly because I knew what that word meant. I certainly wasn’t an expert on cerebral palsy, yet I’d seen people on TV with it and read a few stories and I instantly understood I’d already bitten off far more than I could chew. This tutoring position was going to be much more than I could handle.
I stammered, “Listen…uh…I’m sorry for bothering you. I need to go…now…”
Yet with the persistence to which I’d soon become accustomed, Richard cut me off and said the first full sentence I grasped: “Can you come tomorrow?”
I shook my head as if he could see me or to remind myself of the correct answer, though what tumbled out of my mouth was something entirely different. Undoubtedly born from my exhaustive, fruitless job search, I answered, “…Yeah, I can do that.”
Richard had to repeat his address eight times before I copied it all down correctly, but the next day at 10 AM I was at his home near East Gourmet Buffet, the sleepy Chinese restaurant, totally unprepared for what I was about to experience.
I knocked on his peeling, beige door, yet no one answered. I knocked again, but heard nothing. A wave of euphoria swept over me. I wanted to scream, Yes! I’ve been released!!! I’d done the right thing and faced my fears and come despite not wanting anything to do with this terrifying situation, and now I could return to the Want Ads with a clear conscience. I turned to leave, when it happened.
The door opened.
By itself.
It was like something out of a horror movie. The door even creaked. There was a rope tied to the inside handle pulling the door open. I halfway expected a mummy to stagger out wielding a hatchet. I’m not going in there, I swore to myself. We can just meet outside. I’m fine right here.
This was the first of roughly two thousand times I heard Richard’s motorized wheelchair approach. I didn’t know what to expect, though I’d seen people with cerebral palsy before. For some reason, I couldn’t get the image out of my head of a masked Hannibal Lecter being wheeled out on a dolly. If he cracked, “Love your suit,” I was sprinting to my car.
Then Richard appeared in the doorway, his mouth hanging open, his torso slumped to his left in his dull black wheelchair, his fingers curled as if he was trying to ball them into fists but they’d frozen in transit. His short brown hair was parted to the left, his face clean-shaven and pale, and he wore navy blue dress pants and a long sleeve, white dress shirt stretched over a small potbelly. My eyes returned to his gnarled fingers. His right hand rested on his wheelchair’s joystick that directed the chair’s movement, and as I later discovered, allowed him to recline as far back as a dentist’s chair, while his left hand waved at me. Instinctively, I took a slight step backward in his driveway. But Richard wasn’t going to let me get away that easily. He lurched out of his duplex in his motorized wheelchair straight for me. I realized that even if I tried to race to my car, he could chase me down. There was no way out. He’d trapped me as soon as I’d exited my car. This was the moment I was certain I didn’t want to work for him.
Richard had an orange light on his chair, like on top of a tow truck, which sat on a pole behind his left shoulder. It wasn’t on, but I could picture it flashing and rotating as he sped down the street. It must’ve been quite a sight. I wondered if he had a siren. Richard was forty-six when we met that hazy, sweltering June morning in his driveway, though when he smiled he looked closer to forty. I had to admit, he had quite a smile, an engaging, welcoming smile, the kind that made me forget all about his cerebral palsy, if only for a moment.
I introduced myself and reminded him of our conversation on the phone, though he just laughed and replied, “You’re not selling Bibles?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. His speech was very slurred, yet it sounded like he’d made a joke. I took the safe route and repeated my introduction, almost verbatim.
He began laughing so hard, drool spilled out of the left corner of his mouth. Then he flicked the joystick with his right index finger to make his wheelchair spin around in a circle, as he exclaimed, “I’ve got cerebral palsy, I’m not crazy!”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. For a moment, we both just stared at each other, smiling.
If you’re interested in reading my book, Life at 8 mph: How a Man with Cerebral Palsy Taught Me the Secret to Happiness, you can find it on Amazon
