No one expects a book about paralysis to be funny. Yet author Allen Rucker injects large doses of humor in his candid, affecting new book entitled ‘The Best Seat in the House: How I Woke Up One Tuesday and was Paralyzed for Life’ (HarperCollins). Rucker will appear at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 15. Rucker was a normal, middle-aged man with a wife and kids, trying to pay his mortgage and carve out a successful career in Hollywood writing television comedy. ”Normal’ may be stretching it, but before paralysis, my problems weren’t a lot different from yours or your brother-in-law’s,’ Rucker writes in his introduction. ‘I wasn’t raised by coyotes. I’ve never OD’d on drugs or embezzled money from WorldCom. I’m not a high-risk athlete, a daredevil, or a drunk. I didn’t have this malady coming’it just came.’ It came on December 10, 1996 when, in the span of an hour and a half, he became paralyzed from the waist down. Rucker’s paralysis was caused by a rare condition called transverse myelitis. At 50 years old, he became a permanent wheelchair user and was forced to completely re-evaluate his life. The memoir is not without its serious moments, as Rucker details the struggles of accepting his new condition with wrenching honesty and poignancy. In a chapter entitled ‘Paralyzed Like Me,’ he recounts the first months in the hospital when his grief, alternating between uncontrollable crying jags and horrific dreams, is overwhelming. ‘I was messed up, man,’ he writes. ‘I had been brought down hard and frankly didn’t know if I had the capacity to deal with it.’ Rucker says the toughest aspect about writing the book was retelling these more personal and painful parts of the story, including difficulties in his marriage. ‘I wrote the comic things first,’ he said during a recent phone interview. ‘That was the easy part.’ Among the most amusing chapters is ‘Cripple Do’s and Don’t’s,’ in which Rucker instructs the non-disabled world about proper etiquette toward the wheelchair-bound. It includes advice such as ‘Don’t shout in their ears. They’re not deaf: they just can’t walk’ and ‘If you must shout, please never shout ‘How’s the weather down there?’ It’s hard to respond with the downpour of spittle coming from your mouth.’ Also, he urges: ‘Don’t try to pass along your homily-filled philosophy about ‘living for today’ and ‘God only gives us what we can handle’ in the space of an elevator ride. ‘What floor, please?’ will suffice.’ And for those who find themselves newly paralyzed, a chapter entitled ‘The Upside of Infirmity’ lists the benefits: ‘You’ll never have to ‘stand up’ for yourself again’ and ‘You have to buy a new pair of shoes only once every five years.’ The book is getting rave reviews, including one in The New York Times. Rucker is heartened by the many appearances he’s made during the last month throughout the country. ‘People who show up at book signings, especially those with some disability, realize they can laugh at their own life,’ he says. ‘Bad things happen in this world. You can sit around and try to prepare for adversity, but it will always blindside you,’ Rucker says. ‘I think a lot of readers going through all kinds of things can relate to my story.’ Rucker is the author of seven books of nonfiction and humor, most of them written since he became paralyzed. He’s written three books on the HBO series, ‘The Sopranos,’ including the bestselling ‘The Sopranos Family Cookbook.’ His other books include ‘The History of White People in America’ with Martin Mull and ‘Redneck Woman,’ with Gretchen Wilson. For more information, go online to www.allenrucker.com.
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