Sebastian jumped into the driver’s seat of my adapted cripple van.
“Let’s get out of here before the police show up!” he said. He stepped on the gas and we sped away.
A few minutes earlier, Sebastian had accidentally locked me in my van with the keys inside for about the fifth time. He never meant to do it. He was just spacey about that sort of thing. And every time he locked me in I said to myself: Welcome to Dave Boffo’s Existential Hell!
Boffo was a great cripple buddy from the 1970s. One night a bunch of us went out drinking. Danny Martin gave Boffo a ride home. Martin lifted Boffo into the front seat of his car, folded his wheelchair and tossed it in the back seat. Martin stopped at Dunkin,’ Donuts because he had a late night craving. Martin got back in the car and choked on the donut. And he kept choking and Boffo freaked because couldn’t just jump up and give Martin the Heimlich or anything like that. Boffo couldn’t even move his arms. So this is what went through Boffo’s head as he watched Martin choke:
“Oh great! This is just fucking great! So this is how it ends. Martin turns blue and falls over dead on my lap. And I can’t even lift my fucking arms and this place is open 24 hours so nobody will even notice that a car has been parked here for weeks and no one will find us until they smell something funny and trace it back to this car and find us both decomposing! Listen here, God, if you insist on Martin dying by choking on a Dunkin’ Donut, at least make him fall forward so he lands on the horn!”
I have found myself trapped in Dave Boffo’s Existential Hell more than once whilst sitting on the crapper. The guy puts me on the bowl. “Call me when you’re finished,” he says. He closes the bathroom door and leaves me alone with my magazine. He waits on the living room couch. And after about 10 minutes I call. No response. And I call. And I caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal! No response.
So this is what goes through my head:
“Oh great! This is just fucking great! So this is how it ends. He’s asleep on the couch. He might not wake up til Tuesday! Or maybe he won’t wake up at all. Maybe he sat down on the couch and popped an aneurysm! And no one will find us until they smell something funny and……. etc.”
Sometimes when we’re out driving in my current adapted cripple van Rahnee will say “I need to run into the store real quick for (fill in the blank).” I’m in the parking lot alone in the van and my wheelchair is bolted down in the safety lock and I can’t move my arms enough to unlock the door either. And I should know better than to panic when Rahnee doesn’t come back right away because when she says she’s running into the store real quick for (fill in the blank) she never returns with just (fill in the blank). But after about 10 minutes, this is what goes through my head:
“Oh great! This is just fucking great! So this is how it ends. She probably went to the dog food aisle and popped an aneurysm! And no one will find me until they smell something funny and……. etc.”
Once when Sebastian locked me in the van, he set out on foot seeking help. I was plummeting through Dave Boffo’s Existential Hell, convinced something would happen and he’d never return, when suddenly he appeared with a stranger who had his own slim jim and they freed me.
The time Sebastian jumped into the driver’s seat and said, “Let’s get out of here before the police show up!” he had locked in not just me but also Anna, my late first wife. Sebastian set out on foot seeking help. I guess he couldn’t find a stranger with a slim jim so at a loss for what else to do he called 911. “I locked a man in a wheelchair in a van!” He told the dispatcher. “Yeah,” he said. “And I’ve done it before! Many times! All over the city! And this time I locked in two people in wheelchairs” The dispatcher said she’d send the police right away and as soon as he hung up, Sebastian realized he must have sounded like some bizarre mass murderer ready to turn himself in and lead police to all the shallow graves. But instead he would lead them to abandoned adapted cripple vans all over the city and inside would be skeletons in wheelchairs.
Meanwhile, Anna wiggled around enough to unlock a door. So Sebastian jumped in and we sped away. Imagine the frustration of the police to discover the sick psychopath escaped. And to this day he’s still at large.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
The Groom of the Speaker’s Stool
Even I, holder of an advanced degree in scatology, have learned something new about shit and the role it has played in shaping our civilization. In response to something I wrote a few weeks back about the many people who have cleaned up my personal shit, an exceedingly astute reader of Smart Ass Cripple (which is redundant to say) sent me information about the Groom of the Stool.
I checked it out and learned that English monarchs once bestowed that title upon the trusted bathroom servant who cleaned up their shit. Whenever his majesty felt moved, the Groom of the Stool prepared and emptied the chamber pot and even helped the king wipe his nether region with a scrap of flannel. The groom was considered to be a most prestigious servant position. He was sort of the chief of staff of servants. Only the most discreet, trustworthy courtier was given this honor. One can see why. The Groom of the Stool was privy to exclusive gossip about the king that could be rich fodder for blackmail or satire—such as the musical pitch of his highness’s farts or his splatter patterns.
The day after learning about the Groom of the Stool, I found myself outside the country club where John Boehner is a member. It’s called Wetherington. It’s a gray castle one the hill in the gated community of the same name where Boehner lives just north of Cincinnati. But there was no one in the guard's booth and the gates were wide open so we drove right in. What’s the point of living in a gated community if you can’t even keep out dregs like me?
I was with a bunch of cripple activists protesting Boehner’s passionate desire to cut $770 billion from Medicaid. The day before, we leafleted outside his church as his fellow parishioners emerged, until someone called the cops. On this day we took pictures of ourselves with protest signs, the country club looming in the background. Overstuffed white people whizzed by on golf carts. Someone again called the cops. We left.
Boehner will probably get his way and yank the rug out from under the poorest poor people. But as I watched Wetherington slowly implode away in the rearview, I was sustained by the hope that if we all apply enough pressure and take to the streets from coast to coast, maybe we can convince Boehner to give at least one poor person a break by creating a new position on his staff: Groom of the Speaker’s Stool. It’s true that such a post would be symbolic busywork in this age of flush toilets. But the name of the game today is job creation, isn’t it? In Boehner’s brave new world, the perfect job for a poor person is cleaning up the shit of the country clubbers.
Of course, being a good capitalist, the Speaker may well conclude that he shouldn’t pay someone to groom his stool when there are plenty who can be compelled do it for free. So maybe some welfare person will have to dab his netherland with a powder puff until it smells like petunias, in exchange for Social Security and food stamps.
Or better yet, how about prisoner work release? In the Speaker’s privy chamber, guards armed with taser guns unshackle a man in an orange jumpsuit. The speaker rises from his throne, turns and bends forward. The guard hands the prisoner a goblet filled with a delicate mixture of rose water infused with aloe vera and dove tears. The prisoner takes a mouthful and sloshes it. The prisoner drops to his knees and spits. The human bidet!
Having a prestigious job like Groom of the Speaker’s Stool will give some poor person a real sense of self-worth. Or at least it will give them a real sense of what they’re worth to Boehner.
I checked it out and learned that English monarchs once bestowed that title upon the trusted bathroom servant who cleaned up their shit. Whenever his majesty felt moved, the Groom of the Stool prepared and emptied the chamber pot and even helped the king wipe his nether region with a scrap of flannel. The groom was considered to be a most prestigious servant position. He was sort of the chief of staff of servants. Only the most discreet, trustworthy courtier was given this honor. One can see why. The Groom of the Stool was privy to exclusive gossip about the king that could be rich fodder for blackmail or satire—such as the musical pitch of his highness’s farts or his splatter patterns.
The day after learning about the Groom of the Stool, I found myself outside the country club where John Boehner is a member. It’s called Wetherington. It’s a gray castle one the hill in the gated community of the same name where Boehner lives just north of Cincinnati. But there was no one in the guard's booth and the gates were wide open so we drove right in. What’s the point of living in a gated community if you can’t even keep out dregs like me?
I was with a bunch of cripple activists protesting Boehner’s passionate desire to cut $770 billion from Medicaid. The day before, we leafleted outside his church as his fellow parishioners emerged, until someone called the cops. On this day we took pictures of ourselves with protest signs, the country club looming in the background. Overstuffed white people whizzed by on golf carts. Someone again called the cops. We left.
Boehner will probably get his way and yank the rug out from under the poorest poor people. But as I watched Wetherington slowly implode away in the rearview, I was sustained by the hope that if we all apply enough pressure and take to the streets from coast to coast, maybe we can convince Boehner to give at least one poor person a break by creating a new position on his staff: Groom of the Speaker’s Stool. It’s true that such a post would be symbolic busywork in this age of flush toilets. But the name of the game today is job creation, isn’t it? In Boehner’s brave new world, the perfect job for a poor person is cleaning up the shit of the country clubbers.
Of course, being a good capitalist, the Speaker may well conclude that he shouldn’t pay someone to groom his stool when there are plenty who can be compelled do it for free. So maybe some welfare person will have to dab his netherland with a powder puff until it smells like petunias, in exchange for Social Security and food stamps.
Or better yet, how about prisoner work release? In the Speaker’s privy chamber, guards armed with taser guns unshackle a man in an orange jumpsuit. The speaker rises from his throne, turns and bends forward. The guard hands the prisoner a goblet filled with a delicate mixture of rose water infused with aloe vera and dove tears. The prisoner takes a mouthful and sloshes it. The prisoner drops to his knees and spits. The human bidet!
Having a prestigious job like Groom of the Speaker’s Stool will give some poor person a real sense of self-worth. Or at least it will give them a real sense of what they’re worth to Boehner.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Outliving My Straws
Smart Ass Cripple is now 55. So if all goes according to my plan, I’ve now lived one tenth of my life. Actually, my Plan A is still to be the only living organism in the history of living organisms to never die. I don’t really have a Plan B. But if I must compromise I’ll settle for living to be 550. When I get to be 548 I’ll probably adjust that deadline ahead a century or two, but for now 550 will do.
And I’m talking 550 in human years, not cripple years. Hell, I’m already almost 550 in cripple years. Being a cripple is rough. It takes a toll. So to calculate someone’s cripple age as opposed to their human age, take every year they’ve lived as a cripple and multiply it by eight. So my cripple age is 440, according to my computer calculator.
But I want to live to 550 regular human years. Don’t bet against me. None of the voodoo neurologists that poked and prodded me in the crippled children’s’ clinics thought I’d make it this far. They didn’t even think I’d live as long as Jesus. But Jesus ain’t even in my rearview mirror anymore. The docs back then used the scientific technique I call pin the tail on the diagnosis. Their lovely assistants blindfolded them and spun them around three times. There was a long chart of medical conditions posted on the wall. The doc stuck a donkey tail into the chart and whichever condition he pinned was what you were. And if you lived two or three more years, they crossed off that diagnosis and repeated the process. And if you lived to be 18, they threw up their hands and gave up. You were free to live your life as whatever amorphous thing you were.
A couple birthdays ago, my sister presented me with her gift of a large, unwrapped cardboard box. It contained 3,000 plastic red drinking straws. “A lifetime supply,” she said. So then I had a concrete goal in life—to outlive my pile of straws. By the time the last straw is gone, maybe I’ll be ready to die. It’s a tall pile. It ought to be around for a good long time. If I reuse the straws enough, they should last for at least 100 or so regular human years.
These straws are my hourglass. I’ve still got a sizeable stack, but the mound is dwindling. It looks like it may be gone in about 97 years. I’m getting nervous. Time is running out. So I think I’m going to adjust my deadline ahead a century or two. When I’m down to my last straw I’ll bury it in the ground. I’ll dig it up every month to see if it’s still there in its present form. I’ll check it every month until it has biodegraded to the point where it has completely transformed into dust.
That ought to take another two or three centuries. Maybe by then I’ll be ready to die.
Maybe.
And I’m talking 550 in human years, not cripple years. Hell, I’m already almost 550 in cripple years. Being a cripple is rough. It takes a toll. So to calculate someone’s cripple age as opposed to their human age, take every year they’ve lived as a cripple and multiply it by eight. So my cripple age is 440, according to my computer calculator.
But I want to live to 550 regular human years. Don’t bet against me. None of the voodoo neurologists that poked and prodded me in the crippled children’s’ clinics thought I’d make it this far. They didn’t even think I’d live as long as Jesus. But Jesus ain’t even in my rearview mirror anymore. The docs back then used the scientific technique I call pin the tail on the diagnosis. Their lovely assistants blindfolded them and spun them around three times. There was a long chart of medical conditions posted on the wall. The doc stuck a donkey tail into the chart and whichever condition he pinned was what you were. And if you lived two or three more years, they crossed off that diagnosis and repeated the process. And if you lived to be 18, they threw up their hands and gave up. You were free to live your life as whatever amorphous thing you were.
A couple birthdays ago, my sister presented me with her gift of a large, unwrapped cardboard box. It contained 3,000 plastic red drinking straws. “A lifetime supply,” she said. So then I had a concrete goal in life—to outlive my pile of straws. By the time the last straw is gone, maybe I’ll be ready to die. It’s a tall pile. It ought to be around for a good long time. If I reuse the straws enough, they should last for at least 100 or so regular human years.
These straws are my hourglass. I’ve still got a sizeable stack, but the mound is dwindling. It looks like it may be gone in about 97 years. I’m getting nervous. Time is running out. So I think I’m going to adjust my deadline ahead a century or two. When I’m down to my last straw I’ll bury it in the ground. I’ll dig it up every month to see if it’s still there in its present form. I’ll check it every month until it has biodegraded to the point where it has completely transformed into dust.
That ought to take another two or three centuries. Maybe by then I’ll be ready to die.
Maybe.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Whatever Happened to Slipto?
Maybe I’m hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But I swear to God I remember kids at the elementary school for cripples who walked around on crutches with one leg tied behind their back. They had a strap hanging from the back of their pants and the strap had a hook on the end that hooked to a loop on the back of the heel of their shoe. And they walked around the cripple school like that for about a year it seemed and then suddenly they were walking around on two feet like regular kids and soon they were gone, back to regular school.
We called them Sliptos, short for their crazy diagnosis name, that sounded like a name of a Roman Gladiator or a dinosaur— something like Slipto Pithusis. All the crippled kids had crazy diagnosis names like that, but this was a new one on us.
According to the Internet, which is never wrong, there’s something called Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis. Maybe that’s what it was. It basically means a hip slipped out of joint. But whenever a regular kid became a Slipto kid, they shipped them out of regular school and off to cripple school until they became regular again.
That’s what happened to all kids who weren’t regular. They sent them to cripple school. There was a girl at the elementary school for cripples who walked like a pigeon. I don’t know what her crazy diagnosis name was. Maybe her diagnosis name was Walks Like a Pigeon, because there was nothing else wrong with her. She could hear and see and talk just fine. She didn’t coo or anything like that. She just walked like a pigeon. We didn’t know why she walked like a pigeon. We thought maybe she was abandoned as an infant and raised by pigeons. They sent her to physical therapy and all. I have no idea what sort of physical therapy you give someone to get them to stop walking like a pigeon. But apparently it didn’t work because she kept walking like a pigeon.
And then there was Stevie, the round black kid who out of the blue would sing out SUPERMAAAAAN! He sang it out on the top of his lungs. You could hear it all the way down the hall: SUPERMAAAAAAN! Maybe it was Tourette’s before they called it Tourette’s. They sent him to physical therapy too but it didn’t stop him from singing. Stevie was also in a wheelchair but it wouldn’t have mattered. They wouldn’t have let him go to regular school even if he could walk, not as long as he insisted on bellowing out SUPERMAAAAN! It just wasn’t regular.
But I’m still around crippled people every day, and I haven’t seen a Slipto in about 45 years. The Internet says kids with Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis are treated by surgery. I guess they get back to being regular a whole lot faster now, without going through medieval therapies. There isn’t time to banish them to cripple island anymore.
Sometimes I ask younger generations of cripples if they ever met a Slipto. I tell them about the kids with one leg tied behind their back. They look at me like they’re concerned for my mental health.
They don’t understand. Once upon a time, there really were Sliptos. I saw them with my own eyes! But now they’re extinct.
Or maybe I’m hallucinating.
But I swear to God I remember kids at the elementary school for cripples who walked around on crutches with one leg tied behind their back. They had a strap hanging from the back of their pants and the strap had a hook on the end that hooked to a loop on the back of the heel of their shoe. And they walked around the cripple school like that for about a year it seemed and then suddenly they were walking around on two feet like regular kids and soon they were gone, back to regular school.
We called them Sliptos, short for their crazy diagnosis name, that sounded like a name of a Roman Gladiator or a dinosaur— something like Slipto Pithusis. All the crippled kids had crazy diagnosis names like that, but this was a new one on us.
According to the Internet, which is never wrong, there’s something called Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis. Maybe that’s what it was. It basically means a hip slipped out of joint. But whenever a regular kid became a Slipto kid, they shipped them out of regular school and off to cripple school until they became regular again.
That’s what happened to all kids who weren’t regular. They sent them to cripple school. There was a girl at the elementary school for cripples who walked like a pigeon. I don’t know what her crazy diagnosis name was. Maybe her diagnosis name was Walks Like a Pigeon, because there was nothing else wrong with her. She could hear and see and talk just fine. She didn’t coo or anything like that. She just walked like a pigeon. We didn’t know why she walked like a pigeon. We thought maybe she was abandoned as an infant and raised by pigeons. They sent her to physical therapy and all. I have no idea what sort of physical therapy you give someone to get them to stop walking like a pigeon. But apparently it didn’t work because she kept walking like a pigeon.
And then there was Stevie, the round black kid who out of the blue would sing out SUPERMAAAAAN! He sang it out on the top of his lungs. You could hear it all the way down the hall: SUPERMAAAAAAN! Maybe it was Tourette’s before they called it Tourette’s. They sent him to physical therapy too but it didn’t stop him from singing. Stevie was also in a wheelchair but it wouldn’t have mattered. They wouldn’t have let him go to regular school even if he could walk, not as long as he insisted on bellowing out SUPERMAAAAN! It just wasn’t regular.
But I’m still around crippled people every day, and I haven’t seen a Slipto in about 45 years. The Internet says kids with Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis are treated by surgery. I guess they get back to being regular a whole lot faster now, without going through medieval therapies. There isn’t time to banish them to cripple island anymore.
Sometimes I ask younger generations of cripples if they ever met a Slipto. I tell them about the kids with one leg tied behind their back. They look at me like they’re concerned for my mental health.
They don’t understand. Once upon a time, there really were Sliptos. I saw them with my own eyes! But now they’re extinct.
Or maybe I’m hallucinating.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Smart Ass Cripple Gets Intimate
I, Smart Ass Cripple, have engaged in thousands of acts of deep intimacy with dozens and dozens of men. It began way back when I was in college and it continues to this day. I have paid most of these men to be intimate with me. There have been so many of them that I can’t even remember all their names and faces. I am not ashamed of these intimate encounters. Some people would be, but I am not. Just because I’m crippled doesn’t mean I don’t have needs.
Many of these acts of intimacy have taken place in bathrooms, sometimes even in the stalls of public bathrooms. Here’s how they go: (Warning: Smart Ass Cripple is about to give a graphic description of an act of intimacy that many might find disturbing. If you are one of those people, go drink some warm buttermilk or something.) First, the man removes my pants so that I am naked from the waist down. Sometimes he removes all my clothes and I am completely naked. He puts his arms around me. I put my arms around him. The man then lifts me out of my wheelchair and onto the toilet. The man leaves. I sit. I read a magazine.
When I’m finished I call and the man returns. And then our intimacy reaches its unspeakable climax. The man grabs a wad of toilet paper, leans me over and wipes me up. Then sometimes we continue to get intimate in the shower as well. The man shampoos my hair, scrubs down all of my body. Our intimacy continues in the bedroom. He knows all my favorite positions in bed. Sometimes I sleep positioned on my right side, sometimes on my left. He puts me in a position where I am comfortable and then he leaves.
I will continue to pay men to perform these acts of intimacy with me until the day I die because, like I said, I have needs, just like you. I need to shit and shower and sleep. I need to eat. I need to do my laundry.
A man applied to work for me some years ago. He said he was from Cambodia. During the interview, he told me his harrowing childhood tale of escaping the Khmer Rouge. He fled through the jungle with his family. The jungle was full of wild animals, deadly snakes, Khmer Rouge. But they made it to America. I was inspired by his fortitude so I hired him. And he quit after about three days on the job with me. The lions and tigers and bears and Khmer Rouge weren’t nearly as scary to him as my bathroom wipey time.
My advice is, if you’re creeped out by too much intimacy, don’t ever get too attached to a cripple. And for the love of God, be sure you never become a cripple.
Many of these acts of intimacy have taken place in bathrooms, sometimes even in the stalls of public bathrooms. Here’s how they go: (Warning: Smart Ass Cripple is about to give a graphic description of an act of intimacy that many might find disturbing. If you are one of those people, go drink some warm buttermilk or something.) First, the man removes my pants so that I am naked from the waist down. Sometimes he removes all my clothes and I am completely naked. He puts his arms around me. I put my arms around him. The man then lifts me out of my wheelchair and onto the toilet. The man leaves. I sit. I read a magazine.
When I’m finished I call and the man returns. And then our intimacy reaches its unspeakable climax. The man grabs a wad of toilet paper, leans me over and wipes me up. Then sometimes we continue to get intimate in the shower as well. The man shampoos my hair, scrubs down all of my body. Our intimacy continues in the bedroom. He knows all my favorite positions in bed. Sometimes I sleep positioned on my right side, sometimes on my left. He puts me in a position where I am comfortable and then he leaves.
I will continue to pay men to perform these acts of intimacy with me until the day I die because, like I said, I have needs, just like you. I need to shit and shower and sleep. I need to eat. I need to do my laundry.
A man applied to work for me some years ago. He said he was from Cambodia. During the interview, he told me his harrowing childhood tale of escaping the Khmer Rouge. He fled through the jungle with his family. The jungle was full of wild animals, deadly snakes, Khmer Rouge. But they made it to America. I was inspired by his fortitude so I hired him. And he quit after about three days on the job with me. The lions and tigers and bears and Khmer Rouge weren’t nearly as scary to him as my bathroom wipey time.
My advice is, if you’re creeped out by too much intimacy, don’t ever get too attached to a cripple. And for the love of God, be sure you never become a cripple.
Friday, June 10, 2011
How to Avoid the Blind
Go ahead and admit it. You’ve tried to avoid a blind person. You might as well admit it.
We all do it. I do all the time. Blind people are like everybody else. Some of them are obnoxious and irritating and you want to avoid them by any means necessary. There’s at least one such blind person in everyone's life, isn’t there? Admit it. Maybe you work with one. Maybe there’s one on the bus every morning. Maybe there’s one begging on your corner. So you silently tiptoe right past their noses, hoping you’ll slip by them without them noticing you were there. And then you feel like a worm because you deceived a poor blind person but you really shouldn’t feel bad. Why should you go to any less length to avoid an irritating and obnoxious blind person than you would to avoid an irritating and obnoxious sighted person? As one who has spent many years trying to avoid certain blind people, I can offer you some helpful tips.
I’m at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to avoiding irritating and obnoxious blind people I know because I can’t sneak past them silently. My motorized wheelchair clicks and whirrs and if a blind person has been around me a few times, they can tell it’s me by the sound of my click and whirr. I don’t know how the hell they do it but they do. So in order to avoid them, I have to be well beyond earshot. But if you’re a walkie, you can greatly improve your chances of successfully avoiding any irritating and obnoxious blind people you may know by carefully selecting your shoes each morning. If you fear you might encounter one such blind person and you want to be prepared to avoid them, be sure to put on shoes that don’t squeak or crunch or snap or make any sound. Also refrain from wearing jewelry or anything else that might emit a tattletale jingle.
It also helps if you don’t wear cologne or other scented products because that’s another way blind people can tell you’re trying to sneak past them. Blind people have a highly-developed sense of smell. The more irritating and obnoxious they are, the more highly developed it is. It’s probably an evolution thing. If you must wear scented products, consider switching every day and never wearing the same scent twice. This will keep the blind with their bloodhound noses off balance.
If you have an uncommon name like Ichabod, consider having it legally changed to something dreadfully common like Tom or Mike. Tell everyone you know that you changed you name except any blind people you may wish to avoid. Because if you’re trying to avoid that blind person and some sighted person you know sees you and yells out, “Hey Ichabod,” you’re busted. But if they yell out, “Hey Tom,” you can keep hustling past and if confronted later by the blind person you can claim it must’ve been some other Tom.
And finally, you should master speaking in a number of foreign accents. If you have the misfortune of suddenly encountering a blind person you wish to avoid while you are talking on the cell phone, just quickly switch to your finest Bulgarian or Turkish accent and the blind person will never recognize your passing voice.
Follow these tips and you should be able to successfully avoid all the irritating and obnoxious blind people you know. Then you can concentrate your energy on avoiding all the irritating and obnoxious people who can see you coming.
We all do it. I do all the time. Blind people are like everybody else. Some of them are obnoxious and irritating and you want to avoid them by any means necessary. There’s at least one such blind person in everyone's life, isn’t there? Admit it. Maybe you work with one. Maybe there’s one on the bus every morning. Maybe there’s one begging on your corner. So you silently tiptoe right past their noses, hoping you’ll slip by them without them noticing you were there. And then you feel like a worm because you deceived a poor blind person but you really shouldn’t feel bad. Why should you go to any less length to avoid an irritating and obnoxious blind person than you would to avoid an irritating and obnoxious sighted person? As one who has spent many years trying to avoid certain blind people, I can offer you some helpful tips.
I’m at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to avoiding irritating and obnoxious blind people I know because I can’t sneak past them silently. My motorized wheelchair clicks and whirrs and if a blind person has been around me a few times, they can tell it’s me by the sound of my click and whirr. I don’t know how the hell they do it but they do. So in order to avoid them, I have to be well beyond earshot. But if you’re a walkie, you can greatly improve your chances of successfully avoiding any irritating and obnoxious blind people you may know by carefully selecting your shoes each morning. If you fear you might encounter one such blind person and you want to be prepared to avoid them, be sure to put on shoes that don’t squeak or crunch or snap or make any sound. Also refrain from wearing jewelry or anything else that might emit a tattletale jingle.
It also helps if you don’t wear cologne or other scented products because that’s another way blind people can tell you’re trying to sneak past them. Blind people have a highly-developed sense of smell. The more irritating and obnoxious they are, the more highly developed it is. It’s probably an evolution thing. If you must wear scented products, consider switching every day and never wearing the same scent twice. This will keep the blind with their bloodhound noses off balance.
If you have an uncommon name like Ichabod, consider having it legally changed to something dreadfully common like Tom or Mike. Tell everyone you know that you changed you name except any blind people you may wish to avoid. Because if you’re trying to avoid that blind person and some sighted person you know sees you and yells out, “Hey Ichabod,” you’re busted. But if they yell out, “Hey Tom,” you can keep hustling past and if confronted later by the blind person you can claim it must’ve been some other Tom.
And finally, you should master speaking in a number of foreign accents. If you have the misfortune of suddenly encountering a blind person you wish to avoid while you are talking on the cell phone, just quickly switch to your finest Bulgarian or Turkish accent and the blind person will never recognize your passing voice.
Follow these tips and you should be able to successfully avoid all the irritating and obnoxious blind people you know. Then you can concentrate your energy on avoiding all the irritating and obnoxious people who can see you coming.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Sinful Bedroom Confessions
A few weeks back, through no fault of my own, I found myself inside a Catholic church. (Gimme a break. It was a funeral.)
And in this church were confessionals. And the confessionals looked the same as they did back when I attended Catholic church, which was when pterodactyls flew above. They looked like duplex coffins standing on end.
So confessionals are still too cramped and the doors are too narrow to be wheelchair accessible. You’d think by now somewhere in the row of confessionals there’d be at least one double-wide with a big blue and white access symbol on the front, like when you see a line of outdoor porta-toilets.
So I guess cripples, or at least the ones who use wheelchairs, are still exempt from sin. When I was a little Catholic criplet I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. Since the church considered me incapable of sin, I didn’t have to do like all the Catholic kids who weren’t crippled and reflect on the events of the week past and make a list of every time I offended God and then report it to a priest and get stuck reciting a list of prayers on a Saturday afternoon while all the kids who weren’t Catholic were off somewhere having fun. Who wouldn’t want be exempt from that? God was so touchy and easy to offend. So I took my exemption and ran with it. It was a sweet gig. I never looked back. I never asked for a second opinion or an appeal.
But then it was all ruined. My mother had foot surgery so my sister and I stayed for a couple weeks with the Snitzers. Mary Ann Snitzer was my sister’s classmate at the crippled elementary school. The Snitzers were hard core Catholic. The Polish grandma, who spoke no English, went to mass every morning then retreated to her attic cloister where she prayed until afternoon.
Every Saturday the local priest came to hear Mary Ann’s confession. The confessional was her parent’s bedroom. And so my sister and I got dragged into confessing too. At the Snitners our exemption was null and void! Dammit!
The first week, when my turn came, I managed to confess some petty lies or impure thoughts or something that satisfied the priest enough for him to assign me penance. But the second week, when the priest sat on the bed and asked what I had to confess, I said, “Nothing.” His face turned disapproving. “You must have something to confess,” he said. But I really didn’t. How much sinning could I do attending cripple elementary school by day and boarding with the Snitzer by night? I shrugged. The Virgin Mary stared at me from a picture frame on the dresser. “Maybe you disobeyed your parents,” the priest said. So I went with that. I confessed that I disobeyed my parents, which was a lie since I hadn’t even seen my mother in two weeks. But now I had lied to a priest, which was bad on one level because that was surely a sin but it was good on another level because it gave me a sin to confess if I had to deal with this guy again next week. But if I confessed to the priest next week that I lied when I confessed last week that I sinned the previous week when I really hadn’t, how would all that play out? Would I then be a week behind in my sinning and obliged to double up to keep pace? The rules of confession were so confusing. In the future, I resolved, if I ever had to confess a sin to get a priest off my back, I would stick with impure thoughts. That was a much safer bet. That was one sin I could and would easily and frequently commit, even at cripple elementary school.
After I graduated from cripple elementary school to cripple state boarding high school/institution, the sin exemption I treasured as a child I now took as an insult. How dare the Catholic church automatically assume that just because I was crippled I was incapable of cheating and lying and coveting and bearing false witness and all that stuff. I was an adolescent raging with impure thoughts and I couldn’t wait to do my time at the cripple state boarding high school/institution and graduate into the real world for the first time so I could cheat and lie and covet and bear false witness to the best of my ability, so as to fully assert my humanity and that of other cripples.
I would never be able realize my sin potential at the cripple state boarding high school/institution. The whole point of such places was to shelter cripples away from the harsh and sinful world. Opportunities for sin did not readily present themselves. You had to create your own. And even those were lame. Once I acted upon a rebellious urge to flush a plastic cup down a toilet. And sure enough the whole bathroom flooded. They sealed off the bathroom like a crime scene. A plumber extracted a plastic cup. Who could pull such a childish stunt, our adult keepers wondered? Did they act alone or were there accomplices? An investigation was launched.
I never confessed a damn thing. Until now.
And in this church were confessionals. And the confessionals looked the same as they did back when I attended Catholic church, which was when pterodactyls flew above. They looked like duplex coffins standing on end.
So confessionals are still too cramped and the doors are too narrow to be wheelchair accessible. You’d think by now somewhere in the row of confessionals there’d be at least one double-wide with a big blue and white access symbol on the front, like when you see a line of outdoor porta-toilets.
So I guess cripples, or at least the ones who use wheelchairs, are still exempt from sin. When I was a little Catholic criplet I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. Since the church considered me incapable of sin, I didn’t have to do like all the Catholic kids who weren’t crippled and reflect on the events of the week past and make a list of every time I offended God and then report it to a priest and get stuck reciting a list of prayers on a Saturday afternoon while all the kids who weren’t Catholic were off somewhere having fun. Who wouldn’t want be exempt from that? God was so touchy and easy to offend. So I took my exemption and ran with it. It was a sweet gig. I never looked back. I never asked for a second opinion or an appeal.
But then it was all ruined. My mother had foot surgery so my sister and I stayed for a couple weeks with the Snitzers. Mary Ann Snitzer was my sister’s classmate at the crippled elementary school. The Snitzers were hard core Catholic. The Polish grandma, who spoke no English, went to mass every morning then retreated to her attic cloister where she prayed until afternoon.
Every Saturday the local priest came to hear Mary Ann’s confession. The confessional was her parent’s bedroom. And so my sister and I got dragged into confessing too. At the Snitners our exemption was null and void! Dammit!
The first week, when my turn came, I managed to confess some petty lies or impure thoughts or something that satisfied the priest enough for him to assign me penance. But the second week, when the priest sat on the bed and asked what I had to confess, I said, “Nothing.” His face turned disapproving. “You must have something to confess,” he said. But I really didn’t. How much sinning could I do attending cripple elementary school by day and boarding with the Snitzer by night? I shrugged. The Virgin Mary stared at me from a picture frame on the dresser. “Maybe you disobeyed your parents,” the priest said. So I went with that. I confessed that I disobeyed my parents, which was a lie since I hadn’t even seen my mother in two weeks. But now I had lied to a priest, which was bad on one level because that was surely a sin but it was good on another level because it gave me a sin to confess if I had to deal with this guy again next week. But if I confessed to the priest next week that I lied when I confessed last week that I sinned the previous week when I really hadn’t, how would all that play out? Would I then be a week behind in my sinning and obliged to double up to keep pace? The rules of confession were so confusing. In the future, I resolved, if I ever had to confess a sin to get a priest off my back, I would stick with impure thoughts. That was a much safer bet. That was one sin I could and would easily and frequently commit, even at cripple elementary school.
After I graduated from cripple elementary school to cripple state boarding high school/institution, the sin exemption I treasured as a child I now took as an insult. How dare the Catholic church automatically assume that just because I was crippled I was incapable of cheating and lying and coveting and bearing false witness and all that stuff. I was an adolescent raging with impure thoughts and I couldn’t wait to do my time at the cripple state boarding high school/institution and graduate into the real world for the first time so I could cheat and lie and covet and bear false witness to the best of my ability, so as to fully assert my humanity and that of other cripples.
I would never be able realize my sin potential at the cripple state boarding high school/institution. The whole point of such places was to shelter cripples away from the harsh and sinful world. Opportunities for sin did not readily present themselves. You had to create your own. And even those were lame. Once I acted upon a rebellious urge to flush a plastic cup down a toilet. And sure enough the whole bathroom flooded. They sealed off the bathroom like a crime scene. A plumber extracted a plastic cup. Who could pull such a childish stunt, our adult keepers wondered? Did they act alone or were there accomplices? An investigation was launched.
I never confessed a damn thing. Until now.
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