Fortuitous Exclusion

 Some cripples put a lot of their time and energy into trying to make it easier for cripples to play video games. And it seems that they’re having some success. Apparently, they’ve complained effectively enough to get Sony to design a new, more accessible controller for PlayStation.

I wish them luck. This is an access battle I will not be joining.

It’s not that I don’t agree that the people who design video game stuff exclude cripples. It’s clear that they do. And it’s not that I don't agree that this cripple exclusion is bad. It is.

But this strikes me as one of those kinds of cripple exclusion that I find to be fortuitous. It’s probably a good thing for me that video games are pretty inaccessible. Because I know that if I could easily play, I’d probably spend all day playing and then I’d be super pissed off at myself for spending all day playing. That’s the reason why I stay the hell away from casinos. I know if I gave myself half a chance I’d play the slot machines for hours on end, like a fucking zombie.

Churches are another example of fortuitous cripple exclusion. When I was a kid, because I was crippled, the Catholic church gave me a pass on doing the stuff uncrippled kids had to do, like going to church and Sunday school. The Catholic church didn’t expect much out of cripples, so there weren’t many paths to participation for us. Have you ever seen a crippled altar boy?

Thus, there are also cripples who put a lot of their time and energy into trying to make it easier for cripples to go to church. And why not? If there are crippled kids out there who are bound and determined to be altar boys, I suppose they ought to have that opportunity.

But that’s another access battle I will not be joining. I want all of the crippled kids of today and tomorrow to be able to enjoy their exclusions, just like I did.

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Wiping the Master's Ass

 

I hear that in the days of U.S. slavery, working inside of the house was considered by slaves to be the  cushiest of assignments. I guess they thought that fixing meals and making beds was better than toiling in the fields in the hot sun any old day.

 But what about if the master was crippled like me? I wonder if that meant that all bets were off. Because some of the indoor slaves would have been assigned to be members of the master’s pit crew, which is what I call the crew of people I hire to help me get dressed and in and out of bed and help do all of the necessary stuff I can’t do for myself.

This would mean that the job description of the pit crew slaves would include wiping the master’s ass, as needed. Because that’s one of the things that my pit crew members have to do for me, as needed.

And I know that some people think ass wiping is the dirtiest job in the world. There was a guy I hired to be on my pit crew many years ago. He was from Cambodia and when I interviewed him for the job he regaled me with accounts of how he escaped the murderous dictatorship there by fleeing through the jungle and dodging wild animals. I figured that this guy must be pretty resilient, so I hired him. But he only lasted about a week on my pit crew because he couldn’t handle the ass wiping part. I wouldn’t be surprised if he high tailed it back to Cambodia.

So it makes me wonder if some of the slaves would have preferred to stay out in the fields rather than go inside and be on the master’s pit crew. And besides, if you didn’t wipe the master’s ass just right, you might get whipped for it. How embarrassing would that be?

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Cripples Who Speak Latin

 

My wife is a rare breed of cripple. She speaks Latin. Well, I don’t suppose she actually speaks Latin. I don’t suppose anyone actually speaks Latin. But she knows a good amount of Latin because she was in some Latin classes in school. I don’t know many cripples who did that, or at least not many cripples my age.

When my wife was in high school in the 1990s, she was invited to take part in a curriculum for “gifted and talented” students. So she spent a couple of summers taking Latin classes.

On the other hand, I went to high school in the 1970s at a state-operated boarding school for cripples that I refer to as the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). There was no curriculum for gifted and talented students at SHIT, probably because everyone just assumed that any student who was going to high school at a state-operated boarding school for cripples couldn’t possibly be talented or gifted.

By the time my wife was ready to go to high school, new law made it so she was allowed to attend the same high school that the uncrippled kids in her community went to. But because I had little choice but to attend the state-operated boarding school for cripples, I am now illiterate in every language except English. Well, I do know a little bit of Spanish because they did make us take Spanish classes at SHIT. But the only reason they had Spanish classes at SHIT was probably because it was a required part of the minimum state-approved education curriculum. Because all we inmates ever got at SHIT was the bare basics in terms of education, food and everything else. It’s a lot easier to get away with treating people like that when you segregate them away.

In the future, we’ll be able to measure how well cripples are emerging by noting how many of them know Latin.

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