My Best Friend

By Brian McLane

The show was Ironside.  Like so many 1960s cop shows, it was predictable, formulaic, and built around a quirky and/or flawed cop/private detective always referred to (for reasons, apparently, known only to him) by just his last name.

We didn’t care. Hell, we loved Ironside, my brother and I, and watched it religiously every Thursday, right after another favorite, Daniel Boone. Of course, the fact Ironside was the only character on TV, like me, in a wheelchair, didn’t hurt. I suppose it was nice to see a guy in a chair solve crimes, catch bank robbers, and save damsels in distress.

But that wasn’t the reason Terry and I loved Ironside. Nope. We loved it because, like Mannix, Kojak and Hawaii Five-0, it was full of shoot-em-up action, cool one-liners, and, week after week, bad guys getting their comeuppance in the end.

But one night, in particular, Terry and I watched an episode in which Ironside was, somehow, snowed in at a mountain resort and waiting for the roads to be cleared.  One of the bad guys, a druggie craving a fix, decided he was going to steal Ironside’s pain meds. To that end, he grabbed my hero by his shoulders, pulled him out of his chair, and kicked the thing away, letting the disabled cop fall to the ground, rendering him virtually helpless.

As I sat there wide-eyed, Terry suddenly jumps off the couch, bounds over, grabs me by my shoulders, and throws me to the ground – leaving me, like Ironside, on my back and without a clue as to what to do.

I was stunned.

He then, with a devilish grin, looks down and says, “Betcha a buck, you can’t get back in your chair before Ironside.”  And with that, I was off, no questions asked, crawling on my hands and feverishly straining to get back in my chair.  As I’ve told people many times, I made it, but thank God there was a commercial break. Otherwise, my sense is, I might have owed my kid brother a hard-earned eight bits.

To know me, and to understand what makes me tick as a man (while also keeping me grounded), it’s important to understand my best friend in the world – and the one person who's stood by me every moment of his life – is my little brother, Terry.  And to know Terry – or, more to the point, to know the dynamics of our lifelong love affair – is to, in a very real way, know me.

One other thing; while I may have been on crutches or in a wheelchair my entire life, I was never raised as disabled. From Day One, I was always just one of the kids.  My father saw to that and made it clear everyone else did, too. And the combination of those two things, especially early on – my brother’s willingness to treat me with no more deference than had I been born with two good legs, and my father’s insistence that I will never be treated as anything but normal kid – remain to this day my two greatest gifts ever.  (And, frankly, I wouldn't have accomplished all I did, nor would I be writing this now, if not for them.)

Certainly, and make no mistake, my four brothers and my sister were all dear to me, and they all helped, in some way, shape the man I am now.

But Terry was the key. He was my best friend. He was my sounding board, my patsy, and my confidant. He was my constant companion and the butt of so many of my jokes, and I his. Terry was my roommate, my wingman, and my rival, all rolled into one impish and slightly pain-in-the-ass package.

Much of that, likely, was because we were the two youngest. But, perhaps, just as big a part was something even more basic. Terry, you see, was the only one of my five siblings who never lived even a single day without having a big brother who needed help to do even the most basic things.

To the others, I was the little brother – the intruder – who he came along and began sucking up all the oxygen and consuming so much of mom’s energy.  I was the game-changer, in other words, the kid brother who couldn’t even sit up by himself and who, in one fell swoop, managed to turn the entire family dynamic on its ear.

But for Terry, there were no memories of summer afternoons or school days without me. There was only me always in the other bed, me always on the other side of the Monopoly board or the Uno deck, and me always telling him to shut up and change the channel so I could see what’s on the other station.

For all I know, maybe Terry even considered it “cool” to have an older brother who everyone in the neighborhood knew because of his small stature, his crutches, or his wheelchair.  Who knows?

Regardless, for all I loved every one of my siblings, Terry was the one who, when he skinned a knee, I bled.  He was not only part of me, he was me. He was my able-bodied alter-ego and my heroic little brother who treated me with the same mix of disrespect, competitiveness and affection that only the closest and dearest of brothers are ever lucky enough to know.

I love you, Terry. Always have and always will. ###