Crippled Fools Throughout the Centuries

If I wasn’t crippled, I don’t know if I would be a smart ass. Probably not. I think the two go hand in hand.

It’s the result of thousands of years of cripple evolution. It’s natural selection. I believe that the cripples that have survived the best throughout time are the ones that have the fool gene

Because there have always been cripples like me. They didn’t just invent us in the 20th Century. I imagine that cripples way way back in the days of yore had a pretty rough time of it. No wheelchairs, no nothing. How would a cripple like me survive? I bet the only ones who had a fighting chance were the ones that played the fool.

They probably smothered cripples like me way back when or left us for dead. I mean, they still do that today in some places. But somewhere along the line, some cripple, in a desperate, last-ditch effort to stay alive, probably made a goofy face or gimped it up real good or told a fart joke and everybody laughed. And everybody realized that maybe this particular cripple might have a little bit of worth after all. Maybe we should keep this one around for a little while. Everybody needs a good laugh, eh?

Yeah, I imagine that for many centuries, fool was about the only job option open to cripples, except for beggar. But begging is a dead end job. There’s no upward mobility. Being a fool, on the other hand, could be a path to true economic freedom. A particularly gifted crippled fool might maybe even rise to level of court jester. And then he’d get to live in the castle, summoned only when the king has a craving for shtick. Being crippled might even be considered a selling point when applying for the job of court jester. The king could brag to the other kings that his fool is no ordinary fool. His fool has a gimmick.

Back in those days, playing the fool was a very high stakes job. If your material fell flat and you were fired, you were back to being just another worthless cripple. For me today, being able to play the fool is a bonus, more or less. It still comes in handy. Like for instance, sometimes I have to hire a new person to join my pit crew, which is the team of people who assist me in my home. It’s not the greatest job, but it’s not the worst job either. Ass wiping and crotch washing are essential job duties. But I tell people it’s got to be better than the working at the 7-11 downstairs. It pays a little more and you don’t have to put up with corporate bullshit.

I find that one of the main things that makes people decide to join my pit crew and stick around is that I can tell a decent fart joke. It gives me an edge on the competition.

That why whenever I post a want ad for a pit crew member, in order to find people on the right wavelength, I always say that applicants must “have an appreciation for fart jokes.”




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Yet Another Ask Smart Ass Cripple

Dear Smart Ass Cripple,
I must take vehement exception to one of your entries, in which you referred to our current American president as an “anal wart.” How dare you! This characterization is unfair, inaccurate and ill-informed. On behalf of all decent Americans, I demand a retraction!
Yours in fury,
The Spokesman for all Decent Americans


Dear Spokesman,
Your letter caused me to engage in a great deal of reflection, which brought me to the sobering realization that I did indeed call our chief executive an anal wart without having a full understanding of what an anal wart is. So you are correct in asserting that I was ill-informed.

After studying up on anal warts on the internet, I’ve learned that there are some striking similarities between anal warts and the president. For instance, one site described anal warts as “cauliflower-like” in appearance. And there is something vaguely cauliflower-like about our president.

And, much like our president, anal warts are irritating and unsightly and embarrassing and a pain in the ass. But there is a significant difference. For the most part, anal warts aren’t lethal. Sometimes they develop into cancer, but not as a rule. Our president, on the other hand, is a cultural cancer that is 100 percent lethal. Unless excised as soon as possible, we’re all doomed.

So I hereby offer this retraction. I should not have referred to POTUS 45 as an anal wart. It was unfair, inaccurate and ill-informed. I should have called him a malignant anal wart.


Dear Smart Ass Cripple,
Do you consider yourself to be an artist? If so, when did you feel you could call yourself that?
Sincerely,
Art N. Kraft


Dear Art,
I definitely do call myself an artist. I knew I was an artist ever since I was an adolescent living at a state-operated boarding school for cripples, which I affectionately refer to as the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT).

I participated in an art contest. The creation of my masterpiece began when I rolled a paper drinking straw in a pool of Elmer's glue. Then I rolled the straw in red glitter and glued the glittery straw to a piece of green paper. And finally, I squirted streaks of Elmer's all over the green paper and sprinkled them over with more glitter.

I didn't give my sparkling abstract a title as I recall. I should have called it Nude on the Beach or Self Portrait. But it was displayed along with the work of all the other contestants on the windows of the nurse’s station and I won the grand prize, which was a whiffle football and kicking tee.

This is why I feel justified in calling myself an artist, though I no longer have the whiffle football to prove it.


Dear Smart Ass Cripple,
I’m sure you’ve heard the old admonition that masturbation will make you go blind. Is this true or is it just a wives tale? I figured you’d know.
Yours truly,
A Worried Catholic


Dear Worried Catholic,
All I can say is I’ve known many blind people in my life and every last one of them masturbated at some point. I’ve never asked any of them if they’ve ever masturbated. I just assume they all have and probably still do, seeing as they’re all human beings.





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Kiss Me I'm Crippled

Every year there’s a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago. All the douche bag politicians put on a green tie and march in the parade, especially if they’re campaigning.

After the parade, there are swarms of drunken people downtown wearing green plastic derbies and fake Irish stuff like that. They drink in the bars until the wee hours.

I guess the closest cripple holiday equivalent to St. Patrick’s Day would be ADA Day. That’s July 26, which is the anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. ADA Day is similar to St. Patrick’s Day in a few ways. The douche bag politicians all glom on, but they do it by issuing phony proclamations about how wonderful the ADA is. In Chicago, there’s a parade on or around ADA Day. But it’s much smaller than the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

But you don’t see swarms of drunks on the streets on ADA day. The bars aren’t packed with revelers. Nobody uses ADA Day as a good excuse to get drunk. Well, maybe some people do. I know I do, but I use Wednesday as a good excuse to get drunk.

My fourth grade teacher used to say, “Everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.” But ADA Day hasn’t gotten to the point where everyone declares themselves an honorary cripple for the day. The party stores don’t stock up with cripple-themed stuff. The people who wear green plastic derbies don’t hop into rented wheelchairs on ADA Day or meander around downtown wearing dark sunglasses and tapping a white cane. On ADA Day, they don’t wear buttons that say Kiss Me I’m Crippled.

I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. A part of me feels slighted that there isn’t the same level of appropriation of cripple culture on ADA Day. But I suppose, all things considered, it’s probably good. Because if everyone was a cripple on ADA Day, it would be really hard to find a cripple parking space. And if a douche bag politician like Paul Ryan showed up on crutches with one leg tied behind his back ready to march in the ADA Day parade, it would be just too creepy.




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Brilliance and Luck

For millions of cripples like me, Stephen Hawking was an example of how even a really really crippled person can rise above all obstacles and achieve great notoriety, as long as they’re the smartest person in the whole fucking universe.

But actually, even that wasn’t enough. No one would have known or cared how smart he was if he hadn’t been lucky, too. He was lucky that he wasn’t born as crippled as he was, or else he would probably have been sent off to a place like the state-operated boarding school for cripples I attended, which I affectionately refer to as the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). There were lots of kids there who couldn’t walk or talk or move much, like him. Nobody took them seriously. The staff gave them the basics— dress them, feed them, hose them down, place them in the TV room during idle hours.

None of his fellow inmates would’ve taken him seriously either. In fact, we would have avoided him. I know I would have. There were no big-time cripples like him in my clique, just like there were no cripples like me in the clique of the crippled jocks. In gym class, no one would have chosen him for their team. But eventually the staff would have compelled us to include him in our games. So I guess if the game was wheelchair soccer or hockey, we would’ve parked him in front of a net, called him a goalie and hoped for the best.

The teachers wouldn’t have taken him seriously either. He probably would’ve spent the day in a time-killing classroom learning about colors. No one ever would’ve ever suspected that a kid like him could be pondering the cosmos.

The doctors wouldn’t have taken him seriously either. They would’ve all said he’s going to die any minute now. Oh wait, the doctors said that about him anyway. Never mind.

And the social workers also wouldn’t have taken him seriously. Once he reached age 21 and could no longer stay at SHIT, they would have sent to a nursing home, where he would be fed and dressed and hosed down and placed in the TV room during idle hours.

But Stephen Hawking was a lucky man. By the time he became crippled, everybody already knew how fucking brilliant he was. So he could not be denied. Everyone had no choice but to take him seriously, whether they liked it or not.

Lucky for all of us it worked out that way. But too bad for those cripples who went to SHIT who weren’t the smartest person in the whole fucking universe. Or maybe they were. Who knows?


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If I Only had a Son

There are times when I really regret that I never had a son. I feel it most we I see one of those videos all over the internet where a high school football team lets a local crippled teenager score a touchdown.

You know how it goes. The kid usually has Down syndrome or autism or something like that. He’s the mascot or the water boy or something. And at the end of the game they give the kid the ball and the other team agrees not to tackle him and he runs for a touchdown while all the players on both teams escort him like a convoy of bodyguards. I’ve even seen it where the kid is in a motorized wheelchair. And the crippled kid is usually the brother or neighbor or whatever of a player and after the game that player says that’s what inspired him to arrange all this. He says he did it to bring the crippled kid joy and to make the important statement that cripples can do anything if they have enough determination, just like everybody else.

And whenever I see that I wish that just once just one player had the balls to treat that kid like a regular human being and tackle his ass. And that’s when I really wish I had a son. And I wish my son was a player on that field. Because I know no son of mine would ever patronize a crippled kid like that by letting him score a touchdown. I’d raise him better than that. He’d have enough respect for that kid to flatten him, even if he was on the same team. Or if the kid was in a motorized wheelchair, my son would sneak up behind him while he's barreling toward the end zone and flip the lever that disconnects the motors. Being my son, he’d know where that lever is.

And after the game, my son would say that his father is crippled and that’s what inspired him to tackle the kid or disconnect his motors. He’d say he did it to bring me joy and to make the important statement that not even a super determined cripple can do everything, just like everybody else.

I’d be so proud of him.



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Can Smart Ass Cripple be Rehabilitated?

Pretty much every cripple sooner or later deals with the Department of Rehabilitation. I know I have. But I wonder if I can be rehabilitated. Because in order to qualify to do business with the Department of Rehabilitation, must one necessarily have achieved a state of habilitation at some previous point in their life? Because it seems to me that to rehabilitate someone is to return them to habilitation. And if that’s the case, it makes me wonder if there was ever a point in my life when I was habilitated. And what event unhabilitated me so that I need rehabilitation?

So I looked up the various definitions of habilitate. One thing it means is to clothe or dress. Well if that’s the case, then yes, I am and have often been habilitated. In fact, I spend most of every day habilitated. The only time I’m not habilitated in that sense is when I bathe, sleep, take a dump and write my Smart Ass Cripple stuff. But I don’t think that’s the definition the Department of Rehabilitation applies.

Another definition is to fit or equip a mine for operation. Well, seeing as I’m not a mine, that probably doesn’t apply either.

But another definition is to make fit. Hmmm. So then rehabilitation would be to make fit again. So then the question is, was I ever fit in the first place? I think the premise that the Department of Rehabilitation must operate under is that all humans are fit until they become crippled, which then renders them unfit and in need of refitting. But in my case, the event that rendered me crippled was being born. So maybe the last time I was fit was in the womb. But maybe not even then. Because my crippledness is a genetic condition, which took effect the moment my mother’s egg was raped by my father’s sperm. So maybe I’ve been unfit since conception.

Don’t get me wrong. The Department of Rehabilitation has done right by me, in general. They paid for my college education. They pay the wages of the members of my pit crew who get me dressed every morning. So maybe I should go back to that first definition. Maybe when one of the guys puts clothes on me, he is returning me to my previous state of habilitation.

So maybe I can be rehabilitated after all.


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The Face of the Facially Disfigured

Mom was excited when she came home one day from her job with the federal government. She said a new janitor came in today to empty the office trash cans at the end of the day.

She recognized his face. She recognized it because it was scarred and smeared. She knew he just had to be the kid who attended that segregated elementary school for cripples with me in the 1960s. His name was Kareem Abdul Jabbar (smart ass cripple alias).

Legend had it that when Kareem Abdul Jabbar was a tiny kid, he was sitting in a car as some dumbass adult was smoking a cigarette while pumping gas. A fire broke out and the rest is history.

That was the only reason he was banished to the cripple school- because he has a disfigured face. There was nothing else crippled about him.

My mother said Kareem Abdul Jabbar was a very nice guy, very soft-spoken and mild-mannered. Mom said she felt happy for him that in spite of it all, he had the gumption to land on his feet.

But I wondered if Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s aspiration was to be a janitor on the night shift. Maybe so. But if not, I don’t know if he had much choice. Suppose he showed up at my mom’s office as an executive. A lot of people might’ve been uneasy with that. It’s one thing when a guy with a disfigured face takes out your trash. It’s quite another when you have to take orders from him. And if he was an executive, somebody would have inevitability grumbled about affirmative action. “He only got the job instead of me because of his face! Quotas! Reverse discrimination!” But nobody bitches about affirmative action when you’re a janitor.

And did Kareem Abdul Jabbar also aspire to be soft-spoken and mild-mannered? Again, I don’t know if he had much choice. Suppose he had a bent for flamboyance. Suppose he wore Hawaiian shirts that drew attention to him. Suppose he was opinionated. That would’ve been way too much for some people.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar was the face of the facially disfigured. He was their ambassador, if you will. And with that came tremendous responsibility. Don’t push it. Don’t overstep the unspoken bounds. Don’t blow it or they might not ever give another facially disfigured person a job. Mind your business. Do your job, efficiently and quietly.



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