Dancing With My Blower

 

 I hope I get an opportunity to dance again, at a wedding or something like that. Because a couple years ago I had this attachment added to my motorized wheelchair that makes it possible for me to drive the chair hands-free by blowing into a hose. I call this attachment my blower.

 I got a blower because sometimes it’s too difficult for me to drive with my hand, especially outdoors where the terrain is rough and/or when my hands are cold. It took a good deal of practice for me to become proficient at blower driving because it’s tricky.  You have to exhale to go forward and inhale to reverse etc. etc. I still have dents and gashes in the walls of my home that were created when I zigged instead of zagging while using my blower.

But now I’m a blower driving pro! If there was an Olympic downhill slalom event for blower drivers, I’d probably win the gold fucking medal!

But one thing I haven’t tried out while using the blower yet is dancing. I could dance pretty good driving with my hand. I could whirl my chair around in a circle and all. But it’ll take a whole lot of hard concentration to dance using my blower without flattening too many of the other people on the dancefloor. 

Whenever I go out on the dancefloor in my wheelchair, it’s inevitable that I’ll receive enthusiastic accolades from many of the dancing verts (which it what I call people who walk because it’s short for verticals). They smile big and applaud me or flash me a triumphant thumbs up. Sometimes the drunken ones cut in and make it a dancing threesome. This unwarranted 0effusiveness makes me uneasy because I fear that in their minds, by being out there dancing I’m demonstrating how brave and courageous I am. Maybe that’s why some verts get all overcome like that when they see cripples having fun.  Maybe they expect us to be so sad and tragic all the time and they’re pleasantly stunned to see us behaving the opposite. But really, I’m dancing for the same reason they are. I just feel like dancing and maybe I can think of a whole bunch of reasons why I shouldn’t but I say fuck it and go do it anyway. But then again, I guess that’s a form of bravery, when a person thinks of a whole bunch of reasons why they shouldn’t do something but then says fuck it and does it anyway.  I guess I don’t mind being seen as that kind of brave.

So when I dance by using my blower, some of the verts will probably be super duper overcome to see me on the dancefloor. But fuck it, I’ll do it anyway.

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Side Effects and The Quality of Life

 (Trigger warning. This entry contains multiple references to diarrhea.)

I have a friend who’s crippled for the same reason I am. He’s also about the same age as me.

I’ve written before about how this friend is getting this new treatment that supposedly might make life marginally better for people who are crippled for the same reason we are. But the treatment required getting a monthly spinal injection. So I said no thanks. I’m just not into pursuing cripple treatments and cures that require any more effort than eating my spinach. Maybe I’m just lazy, but I tell myself it’s a quality of life thing. Rather than running back and forth to a doctor’s office or working out incessantly in a physical therapy gym for countless hours, I’d rather spend whatever time I have left doing things I find much more fulfilling, like staring at the wall.

But recently my friend told me that the treatment no longer requires spinal injections. Now he just takes an oral medication daily. This prompted me to consider reconsidering signing up for this treatment. That didn’t sound like much effort. My friend told me the name of the medication and I thought about asking my doctor about it.

But there’s been a dramatic new development that has made me reconsider any thought of reconsidering. My friend has informed me that a side effect of the medication is that it sometimes gives him diarrhea. Diarrhea is one of my worst nightmares because in order for me to take a dump, I need someone to lift me on and off the bowl. So it’s imperative that I have well–trained, cooperative, predictable, disciplined bowels that only rumble during the designated hours when I’ve scheduled someone to be around to lift me on and off of the bowl. An uprising at any other time of day is, obviously, a source of great stress for me.

Thus far in life, I’ve been blessed with a tremendous talent for holding it all in until such time as it's safe to let loose. This is such a gift that it’s almost enough to make me believe in God.

So I won’t be signing up for this cripple treatment, even if it is just a simple matter of taking a daily dose of oral medication. I dare not thumb my nose at fate like that.

It’s a quality of life thing.

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Sex on a Trampoline or The End of Cripple Summer Camp as we Know it

 

 On the day I showed up for one of my annual weeks of cripple summer camp many years ago, I was settling into my cabin and the guy in the top bed of the next bunk came down and introduced himself to me. Since he wasn’t crippled, I figured he must be one of the attendants, which is what they called the volunteers who helped the campers, which is what they called the cripples.

The guy from the next bunk said this was his first time at cripple summer camp but nevertheless he felt confident this week was gonna be a real blast. For example, he said, last night, one of the female attendants and him had sex on a trampoline. (There were a couple of trampolines set up over by the camp’s parking lot.)

This was a life-changing moment for me. I immediately aspired to find a girl who would have sex on the camp trampoline with me. But at the same time, I knew I dared not dream such a dream because it was destined to be crushed.

Because who would sink so low as to have sex on a trampoline with a camper? I was over age 18 and all, just like the guy in the next bunk and the girl that had sex with him on the trampoline. But that didn’t matter. Having sex with a cripple of any age on a trampoline was at the top of the list of things that would get somebody kicked out of cripple summer camp. Hell, it might even get you arrested.

And that made me yearn to get laid on the camp trampoline even more. Because I figured if I got kicked out of cripple summer camp for having sex on the trampoline, I’d become a folk legend. And I’d be an inspiring new role model for campers of future. They’d figure that if I could get laid on a trampoline, maybe, just maybe, someday they might, too. And that could open up a whole new world of possibilities for them. No longer would the realm of cripples at summer camp be limited to arts and crafts. The life lesson offered by my legend would be that cripples should aim high and not be defined and constrained by society's low expectations 

It would be the end of cripple summer camp as we know it.

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The Evolution of Cripple Charity Pitches

  

 

There are loads and loads of commercials where someone says something like, “Your generous gift of $19 a month will change lives.” Then they show a montage of those for whom the money is being raised, which is usually dogs or crippled children.

And I notice that the dogs in the montage are all desperately, heartbreakingly sad. But the crippled children are heartwarmingly upbeat, in spite of themselves.

I’m not sure what it all means. I’m not sure if this is an improvement over how things used to be. It used to be that crippled kids in charity ads also had to be desperately, heartbreakingly sad to pack the maximum sympathy punch. But somewhere along the line, someone decided that the most effective little spokescripples must be plucky and upbeat.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. It’s okay to have commercials where crippled adults ask for $19 a month, as long as they’re war vets. The crippled war vets are allowed to be sad, but in an adult sort of way. They don’t have to be plucky and upbeat, but their spirits should be brightened at least a little bit by the prospect of you donating $19 a month.

It’s also okay for crippled kids in charity commercials to be just as sad as dogs, as long as those kids are from other countries and are preferably not white. A good example is that commercial that beseeches everyone to donate $19 a month so kids in Guatemala can get surgery to fix their cleft palates. The little brown kids in the "before” videos, who still have cleft palates, are sad as hell. But in the "after” videos, when they don’t have cleft palates anymore, they’re smiling big. In that commercial there’s a scene that takes place in a remote and desolate village where a boy with a cleft palate approaches some other kids but those kids shun him like he’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And so the cleft palate kid slunks away, dejectedly. I always wonder how that scene was captured on camera. It must’ve been staged. There must have been a camera crew and lightning all set up and the director says “Action! Okay now enter cleft palate kid and go up to those other kids. And you other kids shun him hard, like he’s got cooties! That’s great! Now slunk away, cleft palate kid. Dejectedly! Outstanding! Cuuuut! It’s a wrap!”

I wonder if they made the poor cleft palate kid shoot that scene before they would give him his surgery.

Anyway, to get back to my point, I don’t know what all this means. I’ll leave that question to be contemplated by great scholars and philosophers, who have a lot of free time on their hands. 

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Three-Legged Dogs

  

 

I saw a young man and young woman walking a couple of dogs. And the dogs looked like they could be siblings because they were both large and hound-like and they were a similar color. And both dogs were missing their front right leg.

I wondered if they were some weird new breed of dog that only has three legs. And then I wondered if the young man and woman got the dogs from some weird niche dog rescue group that only deals in three-legged dogs.

Then I felt a little ashamed because I caught myself staring at the crippled dogs, like people sometimes stare at me.  But the dogs didn’t care or even notice that I was staring at them and that made me feel a strong bond of cripple kinship with them.  They were out there going about their business, bound and determined. One of them had a ragdoll toy clinched firmly in its teeth. They hopped along with a steady, confident stride.

These crippled dogs were an inspiration, I thought. They were cripple role models. Human cripples could learn a lot from these dogs. Because these dogs didn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks about them being crippled. When humans become crippled, they often get hung up on silly stuff like body image. They’re ashamed to look crippled, so they don’t go out in public because they’re afraid somebody might stare at them, especially if they use a wheelchair or something conspicuous like that.

But dogs don’t care about stuff like body image. They’ve got no time to worry about such a trifle. They’ve got places to go and things to do. There are snowbanks to pee on, insolent squirrels that need to be terrorized.

Crippled dogs are incapable of equating being crippled with being ashamed, unlike crippled humans.

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I Ain't Afraid of no Stinkin' Carjackers!

I've been hearing a lot on the news these days about an outbreak of carjacking. But I’m not afraid of being carjacked.

I feel confident saying that based on my assumption that riding around in a cripple van like I do makes me pretty much immune from being carjacked. Because, first of all, who wants to carjack a cripple van? They have no resale value, except to other cripples. But I also think that for that reason, it’s inevitable that some enterprising carjacking ringleader will someday get wise to the fact that although demand for cripple vans is limited, it’s potentially a quite lucrative market. Hell, a cripple van costs as much as two regular cars so not a whole lot of cripples can afford one. It’s a seller’s market. I know if someone offered me a slightly-used cripple van at a discount price, I’d have a hard time saying no. So sooner or later some ringleader, in their never-ending quest for a competitive advantage, with change their business plan to appeal to a niche market and specialize in only jacking cripple van. Oh shit, I hope I didn’t just give someone an idea! I’ve said too much! It’s a good thing all of my readers are model citizens.

But even when that ominous day comes, I still won’t be worried about being carjacked. Because whenever I get into my cripple van, the person who’s with me has to secure my wheelchair so I won’t roll around when we hit the brakes. So they attach these hooks that are at the end of retractable straps bolted to the floor to four connection points on my wheelchair. And then they buckle a shoulder harness across my chest. So if someone comes up to me in my cripple van and orders me at gunpoint to get out, I’ll say, "Well okay, I’m happy to oblige, but first, see those four hooks? You’ll need to unhook those for me. Then I’ll need you to unbuckle my shoulder harness. And then you’ll need to deploy the ramp by pushing that black button over there on the—"

I figure long before things get to that point the carjacker will say fuck it and run off looking for an easier mark to jack.

Maybe that’s why there isn’t a carjacking ring specializing in cripple vans. 

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Screw Mt. Everest

 

 

 

Another reason I know I’m not no way no how one of those cripples who “overcomes” is because there’s a certain Mt. Everest element to it all. And that ain’t me.

Because what drives a person to climb Mt. Everest is a spirit of conquest. You do it just for the sake of doing it. But I say screw Mt. Everest. It not like when you get to the top there’s a pot of gold or the gift of eternal life or anything like that waiting for you. All that’s on top of Mt. Everest is a lot of snow and, I imagine, an awesome view. But climbing Mt. Everest doesn’t sound like fun to me because it’s too goddam cold. You have to wear three parkas to stay warm on Mt. Everest and I don’t know about you but it’s pretty near impossible for me to have fun while wearing a single parka, let alone three.

Overcomer cripples, at least as depicted in the movies and on the news and stuff, are filled with that same Mt. Everest spirit of conquest. They dramatically rise from their wheelchairs and walk haltingly across the stage to receive their diploma or down the aisle to get married or whatever. You know the drill.

To illustrate my point, please allow me to use the quest for beer as a metaphor for my life. There’s a bar across the street from me that has three steps on the front, which makes it like Mt. Everest to me. It beckons me to conquer it. But I’ve never even tried to go inside. Now an overcomer cripple would’ve tried to go inside long ago, even if it meant getting out or their wheelchair and painstakingly scooting up the steps one by one, because they would be motivated by the Mt. Everest spirit of conquest. They’d want to do it just for the sake of doing it. But my motivation for going into the bar across the street would be beer. And fortunately for me, there are plenty of other places around here where I can get beer with going through all that conquest pain in the ass stuff. So why do it the hard way? I guess that makes me more of a navigator cripple, trying to get a beer (so to speak)  with the least amount of overcoming.

Oh sure, there are times when I feel a strong urge to conquer the bar across the street.  But I’d be more inclined to do so in the form of a lawsuit or something like that. I’d be driven by a desire to assert my right to not drink their beer by choice.

So I’ll probably never be motivated to climb Mt. Everest, unless, for some weird reason, it ends up being the only place on earth where there’s beer.

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