Like the day Elvis died or O.J. was acquitted, the Tuesday you wake up paralyzed is not a day you soon forget. For writer Allen Rucker—baby boomer, husband, father of two, aging Hollywood also-ran—life started over that Tuesday when, at the age of fifty-one, he was struck by a rare disorder—transverse myelitis—that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Why him? Was he being punished? Was it his stressful life? His frustrating career? Telling too many Christopher Reeve jokes? Dazed and paralyzed, he was forced to reevaluate everything, from the simplest bodily functions to the mysteries of the universe.

In a style that is at once funny and moving, The Best Seat in the House offers an unpretentious and unapologetic account of learning to live with paralysis. Without trivializing his situation, and without sermons or clichés, Rucker invites all readers, whether disabled or not, to identify with him for better or for worse. This remarkably comic and heartfelt book speaks to the fragility of life and to the resilience and adaptability of a single, ordinary human being. Lucky for us, this human being has a sense of humor.

At first, it may not look like the best seat in the house, but read on. You might be surprised.

Please don't get me wrong. Living with paralysis is not like the disease-of-the-week TV-movie in which the Robert Urich character, having wrestled his demons to the ground for two commercial-filled hours, bravely gets off the floor and Frankenstein-walks across the room while his wife weeps and prays in the corner. I wish it had worked out that way, but it didn't. Paralysis is an often painful and confusing process that takes way more than two hours to get a handle on, and unlike a TV potboiler, the outcome is always in doubt. Just when you think it's time to bring up the music and roll the credits after a small victory—boom!—something untoward happens and you're reeling again. Sometimes you're lost, sometimes you're not, but you're never quite out of the woods.

Here is my life the day I became paralyzed. I was fifty-one, married with two sons, one in college and an eight-year-old at home, living in a big house in West Los Angeles, and pursuing my so-called craft as a writer of television specials and documentaries. I was at best an aging young Turk and at worst an aging journeyman, i.e., hack. I had made whatever mark I had made doing fringe television. First, in the 1970s, I was part of a guerrilla video group called TVTV (aka Top Value Television) which made satirical documentaries about public events like the Republican National Convention, the Super Bowl, and the weird seventies cult following of a fifteen-year-old Indian pop mystic named Guru Maharaj Ji. These shows were smart and well constructed and received a fair amount of critical acclaim. They didn't make any money, unfortunately, and the group broke up in 1977.

My next fringe success was a series of cable shows starring Martin Mull called The History of White People in America. Done on a shoestring, like TVTV, and featuring an all-star comedy lineup—Fred Willard, Mary Kay Place, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean, with Martin as the David Attenborough of whiteness—this quirky faux-documentary look at mayonnaise-eating midwestern WASPs won awards and spawned two books, a line of greeting cards, and a tribute from the Museum of Television and Radio. I thought White People was my ticket out of the showbiz ghetto, but I was mistaken. Before it had reached the commercial radar screen, it faded. It became a small-c "cult classic."

But I did get my shot at the big Hollywood Lotto. With film director Amy Heckerling, I produced a television spin-off of Fast Times at Ridgemont High that lasted seven shows. I got my shot at writing and producing my own sitcom for HBO about working-class misfits starring Dwight Yoakam. (The pilot didn't quite work.) I got my shot at writing an original HBO movie called Hometown Boy Makes Good, a story of a guy who fakes medical school to please his small-town parents. (Anthony Edwards was great as the lead, but the movie disappeared without a trace.) I wrote other pilots and other movies, and they all went nowhere. By the early 1990s I had no career. I was just another schmuck in Hollywood, looking for any low-end assignment to pay the rent.

"Write a tribute show about a campy old TV series I've never seen and couldn't care less about? Sure, I'll do that. Sounds like fun!"

Actually, writing one-shot shows I didn't much care about gave me a new professional life. I started to bounce back as a "specials" guy. I wrote now-you-see-them-now-you-don't network specials, even some about campy old television series, like Brady Mania: A Very Brady Special. I wrote a music special about the 1970s and a nostalgic look back at All My Children. During the heyday of hard-hitting trash-reality fare, I helped write The World's Worst Drivers...

Allen Rucker is the author of seven books of non-fiction and humor, most of them written since he became paralyzed. He’s written three books on the HBO series, “The Sopranos,” including the New York Times #1 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. He is also an award-winning TV writer. He lives in Los Angeles. For more information visit www.allenrucker.com.