A few years ago, for a few years, I worked in human services. In my case, that means I worked with people with some kind of mental retardation (mostly, though I also worked with deaf people, sex offenders, and mentally ill people too). The work could be satisfying, though it could also be very stressful, and always underpaying.
Depending on the client I was working with, when the opportunity presented itself I used to like to give my clients a thrill. My experience was that a lot of disabled people weren’t allowed to do any fast, daring, or risky behavior, sometimes for no real reason at all. For example, in many cases there was no rule at all that said a client couldn’t go to a strip club. I found it a shame that we didn’t recognize that these people had sexual desires, would probably never have a partner, and that we stopped them from even looking at pretty girls (or guys).
I used to take my clients on all the fast, scary amusement park rides I could; the rides that make you feel like you’re almost out of control, those are the ones they loved the best. That’s why this story about Ben Carpenter, a young dude with muscular dystrophy who was caught in the grill of a big truck, sounded pretty cool to me. Yeah, he says he was scared, and he probably was when it was happening, but I know he’s going to be telling that story about being pushed by a semi-trailer truck at 50 mph for years to come. It was a thrill, I’m sure.