A Nearly Normal Life: A Memoir

By Charles L. Mee Jr.

Book Overview

As a fourteen-year-old boy from a small Midwestern town, Charles Mee believed in God, family, and his future, which, at the very least, included girls and a long spell as a hometown football hero. But when he collapsed one night at a school dance, his dreams began to vanish. In a narrative at once funny and profound, Mee brilliantly captures the era in which polio, not communism, was every American parent's nightmare. Unraveling the mysteries of his own Cold War youth, Mee gives voice both to the child with a potentially fatal disease and to the man whose recognition of himself as a disabled outsider has served to heighten his gifts as a storyteller.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316558362
• ISBN13: 9780316558365
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Compelling read!

In 1953, when he was a robust 14-year-old, Charles L. Mee was stricken with viral polio. This memoir describes his struggle with polio, and also comments on the treatments (sometimes horrific) that were tried to beat this virus that, in 1953 alone, struck over 50,000 people. His struggle was not an easy one, and his later life wasn't either, but he comes to terms with his limitations, becoming a successful historian and playright. It's a real eye-opener, and he doesn't mince words, which makes for a compelling read.

The Definitive Source

For those interested in understanding the impact of polio, this is the definitive source. No one tells the story like Charles Mee. The depth of his insights are stunning. He makes a powerful comment on the human condition. This book is a MUST READ.

Five stars are not enough...

I don't write many reviews anymore, who has time? However, this book stood out so much above the rest I've read lately that I just had to share. The book is about a polio survivor, the 50's, the discovery of the vaccine and oh so much more. It's about living the life you were handed, not the want you thought you were going to get.His epilogue is pure poetry. An example: "Life continues to change. New things surface; old wounds hidden by bigger wounds show up when the bigger wounds are healed; new clusters of misgivings and confusion take shape to replace old clusters of exhausted adjustments. New things come along to be accepted with grace and peace. The disability and its challenges continue to evolve, and one must achieve acceptance and grace and peace again and again, day after day."I highly recommend this book to everyone. I read about 5 books a week and this book is in my top 20 of all time.

A nearly perfect book

Until his 14th summer, Charles Mee's world seemed safe and unshakable --- secure in a small Midwestern town, surrounded by a loving family, winning praise for his athletic prowess and on the verge of getting his first kiss. And then, suddenly, everything changed. Mee's exposure to the polio virus didn't just infect him --- it profoundly altered his reality, forever changing his perceptions of himself, his family and the way the world works. In this beautiful, heartbreaking tale, Mee poignantly recounts the story of the sick, lonely, frightened child he was and his transformation to the man he is today --- brilliant, creative, funny and "nearly normal."

A personal story attesting to the indomitable human spirit.

In the early fifties, polio was every parent's nightmare. Each summer it struck ruthlessly, killing and maiming children without warning. The virus "stripped away from the nerves their myelin sheath, which acts like insulation around an electric cord, so that the nerves short-circuited, sizzled, and died. they stopped sending signals to the muscles, and so the muscles stopped working. Arms and legs lay limp and useless." It was a vastly misunderstood disease which prompted treatments often painful and sometimes bizarre. Patients were covered in hot, wet blankets, stimulated by electric shock, immersed in boiling hot tubs, subjected to experimental surgeries, and imprisoned in iron lung machines. Hospitals sometimes had 60 children in iron lungs at one time jammed into one ward room. Charles Mee's account of the disease which irrevocably altered his life is both intriguing and horrifying, but always inspiring. An athlete as a teenager, he was forced to redefine himself. He emerged from a near-death experience to discover an intellectuality in himself which might never have been realized. The book is a personal story which attests to the indomitable human spirit, but it is also an absorbing account of a gruesome chapter in medical history.