My Amazing Display of Courage

What makes me nuts more than just about anything else are those news stories about cripples who rise from their wheelchairs and walk across the stage to receive their diplomas or walk down the aisle to get married or that kind of stuff. It's so insulting.

There ought to be a law where any journalist who puts out a story like that has to face a firing squad. And they can’t get out of it by blaming it on the editor or producer who assigned them to do it. You can’t just throw up your hands and say, “I was only following orders” and expect immunity when you commit an atrocity. Complicity is as damaging as instigation.

The crippled protagonists of these stories are always gushingly praised for showing such great courage. But how come it never works the other way around? How come there’s never a story about a cripple who bravely rolled across the graduation stage or down the aisle in their wheelchair? Because that takes a helluva lot more courage. Everybody’s expecting this cripple to spend a zillion hours working out in the physical therapy gym just so she/he can rise up and take a few halting steps so everybody else can applaud and cry soap opera tears of joy. And that cripple has to have the balls and self-confidence to say fuck all that. I’m not ashamed to be crippled.

This summer I was invited to be the commencement speaker at the state boarding school for cripples from which I graduated in 1974, which I call the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). I call it SHIT because the quality of the education was so dismal that I am perhaps their greatest success story. How sad is that?

At the time, I was just breaking in my new blower, which is what I call the attachment that enables me to operate my motorized wheelchair hands-free by inhaling or exhaling into a straw. I got it because it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to drive my chair with my hand, especially in cold weather and on inhospitable outdoor terrain. I thought about using my hand to drive up the microphone, since the graduation was indoors in a flat, smooth gym. But then I said to myself, “What the hell are you thinking?” This was my chance to be an antidote for that horrifying brave walking cripple cliché. So I drove up to the microphone using my blower.

I doubt that I’ll get married again but if by some strange twist I do, I’ll damn sure go down the aisle using my blower. And if I ever win the Nobel Prize or anything like that, when I come up to make my acceptance speech I’ll proudly use my blower.

Before I gave that commencement address, I should have sent out a press release about how a local cripple was going to display his amazing courage at a graduation by using his blower. But I'm sure nobody would’ve covered it.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Because I'm a Grown-ass Man

I hear a lot of cripples who live in nursing holes (not a typo) talk about how they can’t even go out of the premises without first getting permission from some dumbass doctor.

And it blows my mind to little pieces. If it was me, I know what would eventually happen. I’d just roll out of the front door one day and soon someone would track me down and say, “Hey, why are you leaving without getting a doctor’s permission?” And I'd say, “Because I’m a grown-ass man!”

But I’m not naïve enough to think that would be the end of it. Because I also hear people who live in nursing holes talk about if they break the rules they might get put on restriction, which means they’re not even allowed to leave their rooms.


And that not only blows my mind to little pieces, it dumps the pieces into a blender and purees them. So surely I would be hauled back to the nursing hole and restricted to my room as punishment. And thus I’d feel duty-bound to venture out and soon someone would say, “Hey, why aren’t you in your room?” And again I’d have to say, “Because I’m a grown-ass man! What part of grown-ass man don’t you understand?”

But I’m not naïve enough to think that would be the end of it either. They would surely haul me back into my room and barricade me in or chain me to my bed or something. And so I’d have to sue them. I’d line up some lefty lawyers to represent me and they’d prepare a diligent document citing all the various civil rights statutes the nursing hole is violating by treating me like I’m 10 fucking years old. But forget all that stuff. I would want the document to simply say they can’t treat me like I’m 10 fucking years old because I’m a grown-ass man. What more justification do I need?

It’s not that I ‘m some big badass ready to take down Goliath. It’s just that of all the things I value most, at or near the top is my status as a grown-ass man. If I had to write an essay entitled What Being a Grown-ass Man Means to Me, I’d say that first and foremost it means not needing to get some asshole’s permission to do a simple little thing.

Sometimes cripples think they’re never going to reach that point. But I earned that status a looooooong time ago, goddammit! And I can’t imagine giving it up without a helluva fight.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Those John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Cripples

I really reacted harshly to that John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripple I knew way back when. But at the time I felt an urgent need to make it clear I wasn’t one of them.

I was a teenager at Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp. One of the more famous crippled campers was this guy who got up on stage every year and sang John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. That’s what made him famous. It was a big tradition. And everybody loudly and gleefully sang along. It was practically mandatory.

But I sat there silent with a pouty scowl on my face. I refused to have anything to do with this patronizing display. And I avoided coming anywhere near that John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripple. I didn’t want to be seen with him. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I condoned such behavior. The problem with cripple summer camp was that everybody in charge was a vert (which is short for verticals, which is slang for people who walk.) The verts that were famous at Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp were famous for being in charge. But if a cripple wanted the spotlight, we had to get up on stage and sing a sing a silly children’s song. It was a microcosm of oppressive society: the verts are always and forever in charge of a world where cripples pass the lonely day away singing children’s songs. It was infantilization, cultural castration!

It was all I could do to keep from heckling the John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripple off the stage. I’m surprised I didn’t demand equal time and then went on stage right after him to read enough of my dark, nihilistic, teenage poetry to smack the sugary aftertaste right out of everyone’s mouth. I wanted to lead the Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp revolution, where the cripples overthrew the verts and took charge! And if I was the head of the cripple junta calling the shots at summer camp, the first thing I’d do is outlaw any goddam utterance of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Or, better yet, I’d make some vert sing it.

There are still many John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripples around today, or many variations on the theme at least. But I don’t feel threatened by them anymore. I don’t feel the need to emphatically distance myself from them or silence them. Times have changed. First of all, I’m not a teenager. I don’t have to turn my nose up at everything like a finicky cat to prove I’m cool. But mostly, things are much better for cripples than they were back then. In those days we were much more vulnerable in the wild and we couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness.

But since then, cripples have gotten out and about a lot more. We’ve even taken charge of a few things. So a lot more people have dealt with enough cripples to know that we’re pretty much like all other humans in the sense that some of us love singing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt and some of us don’t. We don’t have to constantly prove it.

Would I get up on stage and sing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt today? Hell no. Would I sing along? Probably not. But I wouldn’t consider it my sworn duty as a cripple not to.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Barred from Bars

I went to a bar and had a frustrating epiphany. This bar was newly-constructed and a lengthy section of it was about half as high as the rest of it. There were removable chairs at that section instead of high stools.

In other words, that section of the bar was intentionally constructed at cripple height. I could roll right up to that section and sit at the bar. And I got real excited about it because even though I go to bars a lot, I never sit at the actual bar because they’re all about chin high for me. So I just find a table and get served there. And seeing this cripple-high section of bar made me realize how passively I’ve accepted this callous exclusion.

It also hit me how particularly heinous this bit of exclusion is. It has taken a terrible toll. There are some things I have been excluded from for which I believe I am better off, such as churches and Catholic school and military service. But just think about how many important cultural transactions and negotiations take place at bars—everything from sealing business deals to getting laid. Think about all the classic jokes and tales that are told at the bar.

But bars naturally exclude a lot of cripples. They are built at inhospitable heights because, well, that’s the height we’ve always built them at, dammit. It’s tradition! We don’t notice the dearth of cripples at bars because we don’t think of bars as places where cripples want or deserve to be. We don’t think cripples are interested in things like sealing business deals, telling and hearing classic jokes and tales and getting laid.

When I saw that cripple-friendly stretch of bar, I wondered how much of life I’ve missed out on by being excluded from bars. I felt a strong wave of grief. I thought about people who suddenly become crippled and how they mourn lost abilities. A lot are sad because they can no longer walk or stand or whatever. If that was me, I’d probably be most sad about no longer being able to sit at practically every bar.

But rather than stew in paralyzing bitterness about it all, I vowed to take action. What I really should do is get together with like-minded cripples and form an organization with bar access as the only item on our political agenda. We’d picket every bar without a cripple friendly stretch until they all capitulated.

But that takes a lot of time and energy. So what I think I’ll do instead is spend a shitload of time drinking at this bar with the cripple friendly stretch, partaking of bar culture. That’ll keep me busy for a good long time. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

To Bitch, or Not to Bitch

I want to write a cripple version of Hamlet, where Hamlet says this:

To bitch, or not to bitch, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to bitch
And by opposing end them. Or maybe not.

Because the thing is, although I bitch all the time, I never set out intending to bitch. I never say to myself, “What a gorgeous gift of a day. I think I’ll go find something to bitch about.” Lord knows if finding something to bitch about was the goal of each day, my ambition would be easily fulfilled. Every day I pass some place I can’t get into. Each day would be as challenging as playing tic-tac-toe.

So if I stopped to bitch about every little thing that deserves to be bitched about, I might not ever make it off my block. And fruitful bitching, beyond the token bitching that we all do at some point to some poor powerless boob on the front lines of customer service, requires investing a lot of time and energy. Like for instance, the last time I went to the convenient store downstairs, the aisles were so crowded with cardboard pop-up displays that I couldn’t fit through without knocking a bunch of shit over. I bitched to the clerk, who shrugged. I demanded contact info for the manager, which the clerk wrote down and handed to me. But did I ever follow up? Hell no! Who the hell’s got time?

If I bitched every single time I should, I’d be super stressed out all the time. But when I don’t bitch every single time I should, I’m still super stressed out. Because I know that if I don’t bitch, when someone in the future bitches, the person they’re bitching to may well say, “Nobody ever complained before.” And I fucking hate when that happens to me. Like for instance again, I went to this lefty political event a this bar that hosts a lot of lefty political events. I heard this venue had two whopper steps on the entrance so I called but they told me don’t worry, there’s a ramp they put down and wheelchair cripples roll right in all the time.

But when I showed up the ramp was just two planks that were way too short so it was steep as hell. How any cripple got up that ramp without popping a vicious wheelie and wiping out was a mystery to me. So I bitched. And the owner of the venue said, “We’ve been doing this for 18 years. Nobody ever complained before.”

That’s what I mean. That’s why I feel an obligation to bitch. Sooner or later, somebody’s gotta do it.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Asshole Judges

Yeah yeah I know I know. Lawyers and lawsuits are important. Cripples have gotten a lot of good things out of suing for our rights. Hell, I’ve been involved in a few of those lawsuits myself.

But the big problem with suing is a lot of judges are assholes. Yeah yeah I know I know. It’s not just judges. There are assholes in every population and every human is, by nature, as asshole to some degree. Assholishness is like racism. We have to view it as a spectrum and recognize that we are all positioned on it somewhere. Nobody can honestly say they are never in any way an asshole. Assholishness is too ingrained in our culture for any of us to be unsullied by it. The best we can do is acknowledge our assholishness, humbly recognize and learn from those times when it manifests and try to adjust our behavior.

But judges seem to me to have a higher percentage of abject assholes among them. Maybe it’s all that “your honor” shit. When everybody has to call you your honor all the time, even if you’re pretty much an asshole, it’s gotta be hard not to get full of yourself.

Or maybe it’s just that asshole judges stand out more than your average Joe Six Pack asshole because they have so much power. There’s nothing worse than a powerful asshole.

Whatever it is, the problem with lawsuits is you can do everything right and still lose. You can hire the most brilliant lawyers and employ the most brilliant strategy. But if your case ends up in the lap of an asshole judge, you’re screwed. And it can easily happen. History is full of court decisions that are so monumentally boneheaded that the only conceivable explanation is the judge was a colossal asshole.

So when it comes to my rights, I’m not ready to settle for letting some asshole determine what they are. I’ll join in a lawsuit or legal action because why not? Sometimes they actually work. But I prefer street protests because I feel much more in control of the eventual outcome. In a street protest, you call an asshole an asshole. You mock, challenge and defang false authority rather than submit to it. That’s the way to wear the bastards down. You don’t have to call some asshole your honor.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Viva Marca Bristo!

Once in a very great while, there’s a disturbance in the force that’s so significant that it compels us here at Smart Ass Cripple to take a brief break from our incessant smart assery in order to pay homage to one of the greats. It then becomes our task to attempt to convey, in our own feeble way, the magnitude of this person’s greatness.

Such is the case with Marca Bristo. First, let’s get the resume' stuff out of the way. She founded and was President and CEO of Access Living, the center for independent living (CIL) in Chicago. Marca served as the chair of the National Council on Independent Living for many years after co-founding the organization in 1982. President Clinton appointed her as chair of the National Council on Disability. She was given the Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States in 1992. Etc.

When she died September 8, her obit appeared in publications all over the world. Statements of condolence were issued by the mayor of Chicago, the governor of Illinois, both Illinois U.S. Senators, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and whole bunch of others. Barack Obama put out a statement that said,
"Marca had a remarkable way of bringing out the best within us. For me, she was a trusted voice and a persistent, buoyant spirit."

But what does all that mean for mopes like me? Well, let’s start with Access Living. It was one the first CILs in the U.S. when it opened in a cramped storefront in 1980. It was the kind of place cripples like us hadn’t seen before. Just like the first CIL, which was founded a few years earlier in Berkeley, California, it was operated by cripples and they set the agenda. They pushed for things like accessible public transportation. Holy shit! We were used to dealing with, or should I say trying to avoid dealing with, behemoth cripple charities like the Muscular Dystrophy Association that were practically useless. There were never any cripples anywhere near in charge of these charities. They never asked you what you needed and they would never do anything to rock the boat. If they decided to give you a fucking pony, you were expected to take it and be grateful.

Soon, some of us who hung around Access Living began doing wild shit like organizing actions where we blocked streets and city buses and disrupted meetings of the Chicago Transit Authority board with bullhorns and noisemakers to demand public transit access.

The point is, all of us who did this stuff found each other at Access Living. We realized we shared many of the same frustrations and a desire to do something about it. When cripples acted uppity like this, especially in the 1980s, it often put Access Living in a tenuous position. It sometimes pissed off elected officials and funders who could make life hard for Access Living if they wanted to. I’m sure Marca was tempted to forsake us, but she never did. She never joined in our street actions as far as I remember, but she always let us use Access Living’s office to gather and plot. We used the phones and copy machines to communicate. Access Living staff often joined in our actions. And in later years, some of us got jobs at Access Living and we were actually paid to organize! Holy shit again!

I can’t say I knew Marca well personally. We only hung out socially maybe four or five times, though I always thoroughly enjoyed it when we did. Our relationship was mostly business, but the nature of the business made it an intimate relationship to me. I guess you could say we were teammates. We spent nearly 40 years on the same team that started off as laughable underdogs but slugged it out with the big boys and won enough to be taken seriously. When you lose a teammate like that, it really hurts.

But the team plays on, largely because Marca introduced so many incredible people to this incredible team and signed them up to be a part of it. She was wise and humble enough to not make it all about her so the team could take on the complex and vibrant personality of the thousands of people that propel it. Because of that, the team can somehow survive her loss and be stronger than ever. That’s exactly what she wanted.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)