Last modified: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 12:18 AM EDT FLANAGAN: Paul Pickering's healthy perspective Mother's Day is coming and, as usual, I'm behind schedule. This year I'm not so worried, though. I've got Paul Pickering and his PaulMark greeting cards on the case, which will surely keep me out of the doghouse. I call Paul a lot of things - pal, partner, printer and therapist, but not in that order. Therapist usually comes first, but be assured the sessions are mercifully short. When I stop by to see him tonight, if things go according to their usual form, I'll ask, "How's it going?" and he'll say, "I got nothing to complain about," and the therapy session is over. I could - and to be honest, my health insurer already has - spend a small fortune for a half-hour or 45 minutes with a guy with a whole lot of initials behind his name who has studied Freud and Jung and company and is skilled at asking the probing question and interpreting the evasive answer, and I would not get as much therapy out of it as I do from those six words from Paul. For when he says, "I got nothing to complain about," he says it with complete sincerity. And when those words come from a guy who lost both his legs and the use of both his arms when he was hit by a car on the Southeast Expressway when he was hitching home from a Bruins game 22 years ago, they have a way of putting all my alleged problems into perspective. My chronically aching back suddenly doesn't hurt anymore. The fretting about which bill is going to be paid late this month just as suddenly seems rather silly. And those upcoming conflicts about summer vacation ... well, life's got to be awful good if I count that as a worrisome problem. You read a bit about Paul in the pages of this newspaper last fall. That was when it became apparent that he couldn't wring too many more miles out of his old wheelchair van, and it was time to get a new one. So Paul thought about what he could do with his voice-activated computer and went to work. He set himself up to print business cards and business letterheads. He produced a compilation of music recorded by our mutual friend, James "Killer" Kane. Later he added a line of custom-made and personalized greeting cards. With those efforts supplemented by two benefit concerts and donations, he made the goal and purchased a used, but much newer van. The waiting is the hardest part, though, and that's the part Paul's been going through for the past few months. There were bids to be collected on the van conversion, then some retrofitting at a shop in the Midwest. At last report, the van had made its way to Norwood. We hope soon to be publishing a picture in the paper of the completed van, along with some more words of thanks from Paul to the people who have helped get him back on his wheels. Meantime, he's working at getting his card business up and running. He's been designing and assembling a line of cards, including the ones that I expect will bail me out on Mother's Day, and setting up a Web page to display his work. While construction of that goes on, you can catch a few samples at http://thesunchronicle.ning.com/profile/ppickeringcomcastnet, on The Sun Chronicle's new social network. He can also be reached by e-mail at p.pickering@comcast.net. You'll never find a greeting card that has had more work put into it. Using a voice-activated computer may sound easy, but dealing with one can be like supervising a 3-year-old who pretends not to hear a single thing you say. I've watched Paul speed through a series of commands, then have to repeat "open file" or "go to Printshop" a half-dozen times or more as the cursor dumbs up and refuses to move. Sometimes I want to reach over and do what he can't - give the computer a swat. Paul deals with it more philosophically. The balkiness of the computer will be another of life's irritations that he will have put in its right place by next week when I stop by again, and he assures me "I've got nothing to complain about." In a guest column about one of last fall's fundraisers, Kathy Fyfe of Attleboro described Paul as "a man that I am blessed to know." Over the last few months, I've learned what she means. Everybody should have a friend like Paul. Those of us who do are blessed with an improved perspective on life's little problems. MARK FLANAGAN (mflanagan@thesunchronicle.com) is Opinion Page editor of The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0335.