Angry Young Men in Wheelchairs

I rent movies from Netflix, and manage to come across some very good indie films that I might not otherwise tend to see. Tonight the wife and I watched "Murderball", a documentary about paraplegic wheelchair rugby players. Now, biped rugby is bad enough; I tried out a practice once a few years back when I was in alot better shape than I am now and I ended up puking on the sidelines just from the drills. If I'd made it to a full fledged skirmish I'm sure those bastards would have killed me. But let me tell you, these guys who play it in wheelchairs make it look like Conan the Barbarian meets Mad Max the Road Warrior. They play in armored wheelchairs because the only way to tackle someone going for the goal is to just slam into them, hopefully flipping them over. Upper body strength is everything, because being able to get from zero to five as fast as possible is a real plus. The human male, paralyzed or not, still pumps out the testosterone, and these guys sure know how to harness it.

They examine numerous personalities, and one thing is clearly apparent.....if you were an asshole before the accident, you are pretty much capable of remaining one afterwards. Whatever their baseline personalities were, these men have had to deal with brutal assaults on their psyches, having to go thru the steps of denial, withdrawal, despair, anger, sorrow, and coming to terms with their new realities and having to learn to live with them. These new forms of extreme sports have been instrumental in returning to these broken souls a sense of purpose and belonging, in many ways making some of them better than they were when once whole and "perfect". Life goes on, might as well live it, and maybe kick a little ass while you're doing it.

I highly recommend you rent this movie. There's a rivalry between team USA and team Canada that rivals any in the NFL. There are players whom you will like or hate, regardless of the chairs. You will discover that yes, a guy in a wheelchair can get laid. And you will get to see the transformation of a young man, who gets to sit in a murderball chair for the first time and the effect his has on his whole outlook.

This isn't reality TV, my friends, no, this is REALITY.

Enjoy.