Fortuitous Exclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wiping the Master's Ass

 

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

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

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

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

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

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Cripples Who Speak Latin

 

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

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

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

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

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

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Too Much Trauma

Things have gotten to the point where going to the grocery store is a really traumatic experience for me. It gets me all riled up.

It’s pretty much the same as how taking my nightly shit used to get me all riled up. My last official act of every day is to sit on the bowl. This is what the new agey, self-care types would refer to as my “me” time. Except the problem was that I would also use this time to read a little before bed. And I read a bunch of lefty political magazines and I’d go to bed grumbling about how the fascists are taking over and everything was going to hell. And I couldn’t sleep so my wife decided that I needed to read something that was full of nothing but good news so she subscribed me to a magazine that was all about beer. And when I read my beer magazine, I’d come to bed in a much better mood. I guess I was soothed and reassured by being reminded that even if the fascists are taking over and everything is going to hell, at least we still live in a world where there’s a wide variety of beer.

But what gets me all riled up when I go to the grocery store are those people who park their cars in the striped area next to the cripple parking spaces. That’s even more ignorant than parking in the cripple spaces themselves because those striped areas are there because wheelchair cripples like me need extra room next to the parking space so we can deploy our ramp or lift so we can get out of the vehicle. So what happens is we park and go inside the store and when we come back out we see that someone has parked in the striped area, which means we don’t have room to get back into the vehicle. When this happens to me, I say to myself, “Didn’t that jackass see all those stripes painted on the ground? If not, they’re too blind to be driving!”

And didn’t they take a minute to consider that those stripes might mean something? They’re the same stripes that are painted in the fire lane and everybody knows that it means that you don’t park there or you’ll get towed. But you won’t get towed if you park in the striped area next to the cripple parking space.  If I complain to the manager that someone is parked in the striped area next to the cripple space, they’ll just shrug and mumble a generic apology. They don’t want to tow anybody for that reason because they don’t want to piss off customers. Apparently, they don’t mind if they piss off customers like me.

One time the vehicle parked in the stripes next to the cripple space I was parked in was a tow truck. Who do you call when you need to have a tow truck towed?

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Cripples as Sales Leads

  

 A stranger approached me on the street a couple weeks ago and it really made my day. Because usually when a stranger approaches me on the street it’s a dreadful experience. Because usually the only reason a stranger approaches a cripple on the street is either because they want to a) give you some spare change because they think you must be a beggar or b) tell you about Jesus Christ. 

Either way it’s quite annoying. The Jesus boosters are particularly annoying. One time one of them said to me, “Have you heard about Jesus?” My first impulse was to be a smart ass and say, “Who?” But I was afraid that he wouldn’t get or appreciate the joke and thus he would proceed to answer my question in great detail. So I said nothing and just kept going. I similarly try to avoid the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They stand on the sidewalk downtown next to a rolling rack full of books and pamphlets, so I just assume they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses. But I don’t know for sure because I’m afraid to ask them who they are. I’m afraid to even make eye contact with them. There ought to be signs all over town that say DO NOT FEED THE CHRISTIANS.  

I feel kind of insulted when Christians approach me on the street because I think they think that because I’m crippled, I therefore am a great potential sales lead for buying what they’re selling, which is Jesus.

But the stranger who approached me on the street a couple weeks ago wasn’t selling Jesus. He must’ve been selling drugs because he was bleary-eyed and as he reached into the pocket of his jeans he said to me, “Hey bro, I got sawbucks.” I didn’t know what he meant but it sounded like drug slang, so I just said, “Thanks anyway.” And I kept moving.

And then the stranger said to me, “You straight?”

So I replied, “Yes, I’m straight.” I assumed that being “straight” means that your current inventory of drugs is sufficient.

The stranger then approached the next passersby and said, “Hey bro, I got sawbucks.”

But I felt somewhat honored that the stranger tried to sell me drugs. At least he saw me as a potential sales lead for buying what he was selling, and it wasn’t Jesus.

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The Bathroom Police

 

 I often pull up to a parking space that’s reserved for somebody with a cripple vehicle but it’s occupied by a car that clearly belongs to some dumbass vert (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical*).

But sometimes I get lucky and that dumbass vert will return to their car while I’m still there. And then I get to experience the joy of watching the look of shame jump onto their face when they realize they’ve been busted. It’s so cool when that happens.

The same thing happens a lot when I try to use public bathrooms. Almost always, the one and only cripple stall is locked because it’s being occupied by some dumbass vert who is taking the longest shit in human history. And when that dumbass vert finally comes out and sees me sitting there that same look of shame jumps onto their face.

Except the difference is that the cripple parking spaces are clearly marked with a big blue sign with that white crippled stick figure on it and it warns that any dumbass vert who parks there can be fined $250.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a sign like that on every cripple stall in every public bathroom? And wouldn’t it be great if I could call the cops and they’d kick down the door of the cripple stall and drag out the dumbass vert with their pants still down around their ankles and haul them away? Maybe the police would even have a code for this offense, something like 10-56= dumbass vert using cripple stall.

But it probably would never work that way. I mean, those big blue warning signs don’t stop dumbass verts from parking in cripple parking spaces.

*Not all verts are dumbasses.  Vert dumbassery is a spectrum. Everyone is on it at some point but those who park in cripple spaces are on the deep end.

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Scrotum Capitalism

There is a brand of capitalism I call scrotum capitalism.

The goal of the scrotum capitalist is to get all of their customers by the scrotum. But you don’t have to have an actual scrotum in order to have a scrotum capitalist get you by the scrotum. I’m talking about a metaphorical scrotum, and everyone has one of those.

In order words, the scrotum capitalist seeks to corner the market on something their customers can’t live without. That way, the scrotum capitalist can charge the customers whatever stupid inflated price they decide to charge and the customers have no choice but to pay whatever that price may be because the scrotum capitalist has them by the scrotum.

 That’s how healthcare is distributed in the U.S. Another good example of scrotum capitalism is the price they charge for the brushes that you have to attach to the end of electric toothbrushes  Have you seen how crazy overpriced those things are? They’re like 10 bucks a piece! They look like they cost about 10 cents a piece to make. But the people who manufacture electric toothbrushes know they’ve got you by the scrotum because what the hell good is an electric toothbrush without the brush? Maybe you could use it as a vibrating dildo but that’s about it. And even then, you’re still going to have to brush your teeth eventually.

Cripples are quite often the victims of scrotum capitalism, Buying a cripple accessible vehicle costs about as much as buying two regular vehicles. But what’re you going to do? You’ve gotta have it so you suck it up and pay for it.

I’ve got these buttons that control various functions of my wheelchair. If I need a replacement button and I go to buy one online, they cost about $70! And they look like maybe they cost about $2 to make, at the most!

That’s how it is when it comes to the cost of wheelchairs and wheelchair parts and stuff like that that cripples can’t live without. But what’re you going to do? You’ve gotta have it so you suck it up and pay for it.

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