Matthew Defies Expectations with Bulletproof Faith and Cool Nonchalance

Matt came to State High too. He was almost too old for high school, but he was able to stay longer because of his situation. His particular level of retardation put him squarely in between higher and lower functioning groups, and State High had a class for both groups, so he spent half his day in State High’s South Building and the other half in the North Building. He crossed the street between fourth and fifth period every day with an aide. Usually, the aide let Matt walk ahead a bit. He was a confident kid, in spite of his circumstances.

Matt had learned to read. He couldn’t tie his shoes, but that was due to his long fingers. Matt was tall and skinny – 6’2” and 130 pounds soaking wet. He’d had terrible scoliosis and a clubbed foot as a kid, but back braces and surgeries had fairly well resolved those conditions. He has a system of metal hooks and rods in his back that straighten his spine, the results of an exploratory scoliotic surgery procedure pioneered by doctors at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. The good folks at Hershey Med took a gamble on Matt that the surgery would take with him, and it did. Off came his back brace, a hideous contraption he’d been stuck with for nearly ten years. He was so proud not to have it anymore.

On November 11^th of 1993, the fall of my freshman year at State High and just after our June move, Matt was hit by a car being driven by a young man named Jeremy. Jeremy was trying to skip school for lunch. The security guard had stopped him, so he’d thrown his car into reverse and backed up, going the wrong way in a one-way zone at about 25 miles an hour (parking lot speed limit – 10). Matt crumpled up onto the back hood of his car and rolled off onto the blacktop.

A girl came into my art class crying. When my teacher asked her why she was so upset, she said “One of the special ed. kids just got hit by a car.” She’d seen it happen. I tried to tell my teacher about Matt, because I knew he crossed the street then. When he realized just what it was that I was stammering, he said, “Go. Just go.” I ran outside and saw my brother on the ground, with paramedics rushing over to him. I held his hand, and through hyperventilated breaths and tears streaming, I told him over and over again that he was fine, that he was going to be fine, that these people were her to take care of him and he was going to be allright. “Okay? You hear me, Matt?” I said, over and over again. He held my hand tightly, nodded and said “Yeah.” It was about all he could do.

Matt was life-flighted to Hershey Med with a blood clot on his brain that required emergency interventionary neurosurgery. The doctors were grim, as they’d been when he was two. They prepared us for the worst – death, a vegetative condition, a severe worsening of his already reduced skill sets.

The day after Matt woke up (not long after the neurosurgery, mind you--Matthew's stout Scots-Irish, English and German background manifests themselves in a physical strength that goes well beyond anything Barb or I possess) we went into Matt's hospital room. My father, who can't do anything on a given day until he eats something with protein for breakfast, stopped in at a McDonald's for some breakfast.

Side note: Say what you will about Mickey D's. Yes, the food is terrible, carcinogenic, and the source of much of America's obesity problem, but they also fund the Ronald McDonald House, where terrified families spend the night for free when their sons and daughters are fihgting death in the hospital. Because of this, no matter how much of their corporate chicanery disgusts me, I'll always allow them a little bit of leniency. Plus, their fries are awesome.

So we stopped in at McDonald's, and I asked if I could get a Happy Meal toy, because it was Batman. I was a comic book geek, but Matthew was a Batfan extraordinaire. I knew I had to bring this Batman toy--I just had a gut feeling. We walked into the room and tried to talk to Matt. He was pretty out of it. We had no idea how he would be. Would he remember us? Would he walk or talk again? After a few minutes, we were a little worried. I walked up to Matt (hoses, wires, headwrap, beeping machines, the aluminum taste of panic at the back of my tongue) and put the Batman toy in his hand. "Matt, I got you a Batman toy," I said, and it took a great deal of effort to say it evenly, to not start crying. Matt's arm shot up in the air. He looked at that damn Batman toy like he was checking out a cool new present on Christmas morning (Matthew on Christmas morning, by the way, is a sight to behold). He turned it side to side, turned toward me, and handed it back to me. I knew at that moment he would be fine. Christian Bale can pack on 35 pounds of pure muscle. He can embody Bruce Wayne, learn tae kwon do and do a whole mess of his own stunts (although he oddly can't seem to drop that weird lisp he's got). Forget Christian Bale. My brother is Batman.

Three weeks after surgery, Matt sat with us at the Thanksgiving table. His only side effects from the whole incident are blindness in one eye (caused by blood pressure from the clot on his optic nerve) and a trauma-related reduction in his hairline. His life has been defined by exceeding others’ expectations, and this was a miraculous example of precisely that.

Oddly, the accident opened up a new world for Matt and I in State College and at State High. Suddenly everyone knew who my brother was. He was flooded with cards and well wishes and was awash in good cheer and support from kids who never knew him when he came back to school. When high school students overcome things like that, it gives everybody a certain measure of hope, I found. As the brother of my now-famous (locally, anyway) sibling, I got a little of the leftover sympathy and good cheer. I met a lot of people all at once.

The accident happened about a week before we were to open Our Town with State High Thespians. I’d auditioned and been cast as a freshman in the role of Joe Crowell, Grover’s Corners’ cheery paperboy. It was a small role, but I was devoted to it. I got back to school in just enough time to be in the show, and that experience was transformative. I watched every second of that play where I wasn’t onstage unfold from the wings. I was riveted. At the climactic moment of Our Town, Emily Webb watches the world from the other side. She is recently deceased. It is as though she is seeing life as we live it for the very first time. She asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?" The Stage Manager, who has shepherded the audience through the play and now shepherds Emily into the afterlife, says "No." Wilder inserts a pause. Then the Stage manager says, "The saints and poets, maybe--they do some." I wanted to be both saint and poet. I wanted every, every minute.