Reasonable Cripple Accommodation

 I ought to be legally allowed to run around naked in public, And it ought to be socially acceptable for me to smell like a horse.

These rights and privileges ought to be bestowed upon me because I’m crippled. And being crippled makes it difficult for me to do a lot of the routine, daily tasks that are taken for granted by verts (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). Take, for example, getting dressed. For your average vert, getting dressed is a simple matter of pulling on your pants.  But not for me. Nope,  I have to have someone come in every morning and pull my pants on me, get me out of bed, etc. I call the people that I've hired to do these things for me my pit crew. Their wages are paid by state funds.

So some days I feel like things would go a lot easier if I didn’t have to wear pants at all. After all, when you think about it, what’s the point of wearing clothes? I'm not a  nudist at heart. And I can certainly understand putting on clothes in order to be warm. But besides that, the reason we wear clothes is to hide our genitalia. And why is that such a big deal?

But I capitulate and  wear pants every day anyway because I don’t want to get arrested. But I sure would love it if I could reserve the right to go about my business pantsless on a given day if I saw fit. I could carry around a note from my doctor certifying me as crippled in case a cop sees me running around naked and pulls me over,  demanding to see my papers.

The same goes for taking a shower. That’s a big undertaking for me, too, because I  also have to have one of my pit crew guys help me do that. It sure would be nice if I could shower twice a month or so. But I don’t because if I do I’ll smell like a horse and that’s not a good way to make friends. 

Going pantsless and smelling like a horse could be considered to be a reasonable cripple accommodation for me. But I’ll never advocate for these changes in public policy because it  might  blow up in my face. You know how lawmakers are. They’re always looking for a way to save a buck. They might really like that idea and they’ll just change the law to allow certain cripples to run around not wearing pants and smelling like horses so they can cut off the money they use to pay people to be on our pit crews.

So if you know any lawmakers, don’t say a word about this.

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Why I Will Never Wear a Toupee or The Cyrano de Bergerac Game

 A long time ago I  made a solemn vow to myself that I would never wear a toupee. I also swore that if I ever was going bald or if my hair was turning gray I would do nothing to conceal it. I would never spend a dime on baldness cures, hair-restoration treatments or dyes. The people who sell that stuff are just trying to shame you into buying their stuff.

I believe my strong conviction to these principles arises from the fact that I have been crippled for so long and cripples often have to play the Cyrano de Bergerac game. It's so tiresome. Cripples who have been involved in the dating scene probably know damn well what I mean by all this. It has to be tempting to put up a picture of somebody that’s hot and hide behind it until such time as you feel confident that the object of your desire is so smitten with you that no matter what surprises you reveal later they won’t be deterred.

The same thing often happens to cripples who are looking for a job or whatever. You wonder at what point you should spring it on them that you are crippled. But playing that game is much too stressful for me. I’d rather let people know right up front that I am crippled because if knowing that I am crippled is a deal-breaker for them, that’s good for me to know right up front.  Because knowing that they are that kind of person is a deal-breaker for me.

The same thing goes for being bald. You can’t keep wearing a toupee everywhere and forever. Sooner or later you’ll have to take it off and it won’t be a secret anymore that you are bald. And you shouldn’t be ashamed about being bald anymore than I should be ashamed about being crippled.

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Cripple Parking Encounters

 A yellow taxi cab was parked in the parking space that is reserved for cripples. I figured he didn’t belong there since I’ve never known there to be a cab driver who was crippled enough to need a reserved  parking space.

A man sat in the driver seat. So the person who was with me got out of my vehicle and tapped on the cab’s window. The cab driver eventually turned his head to look at him, reluctantly and resentfully. My guy asked him to move, through the closed window, and explained to him that I had a genuine cripple van with genuine cripple  license plates and all and I really needed to park there.

The cab driver reached down and pulled out a cripple parking placard and hung it on the cab’s rearview mirror. He then went back to trying to ignore my guy. Right then the car that occupied the other cripple parking space left so we just pulled into that one. But after I exited my vehicle I gave the cab driver the searing, icy, guilt-inducing stare I save for special occasions like this.

This guy clearly seemed to be one of those guys who commandeers his grandma’s parking placard whenever he goes out and stashes it in his glove box, just in case. I usually give people a big benefit of the doubt about that because I  know there are a lot of people who are really and truly crippled who don’t look crippled at all. But this guy sure looked like the shoe fit him just right.

Believe it or not, this was not the most memorable encounter I’ve ever had with a douchebag hogging up a cripple parking space. It still doesn’t beat the time there was a pick up truck parked in a cripple space. The truck didn’t have a cripple license plate or parking placard or anything. Then a guy walked up to the truck. He sure didn’t look crippled but, like I said, you never know. As I shot him my stare, the guy got into the truck, opened the glove box, took out a placard, rolled down the window and said to me, “I’m a black man in America. I was born with one of these.”

The yellow cab was gone and the parking space was empty when we returned to my vehicle. Maybe my guilt-inducing stare worked.

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Misery Loves Company

I don’t understand how some people who have suffered feel better when someone else suffers the same way they did.

I hear a lot of that kind of nonsense when people talk about student debt loan forgiveness. Some people say stuff like, “Hey, no one forgave my college loan debt. I had to work three jobs to pay it off so they should, too!”

Let me say here that I never had a college loan debt to pay off. The cost of my college education was paid in full by the state of Illinois as part of the vocational rehabilitation program.

Maybe if I had to pay off a college loan debt I’d feel differently. But I sure as hell hope I wouldn’t. It reminds me of the time a few decades back when I was involved in the fight to make public transportation in Chicago accessible for cripples. We eventually won, but suppose some old timer cripple had come around back then and said, “We shouldn’t make the buses accessible because I couldn’t ride them back in my day so they should never be able to either." Thank God nothing like that ever happened because no one was that much of a dumbass. If the cripples of today were still just as stranded as we were, I don’t see how that would make me feel any better.

Hell, I never even get involved in diagnosis-specific cripple causes because I’m too susceptible to survivor guilt.  I’m interested in doing stuff that makes life better for all cripples, not just those  who are crippled for a certain reason, like they have muscular dystrophy or a spinal cord injury or whatever. Imagine if a few decades back when I was involved in the fight to make public transportation in Chicago accessible for cripples we were fighting to only make public transportation in Chicago accessible for cripples with a certain diagnosis. If I was riding a bus that was blowing past other cripples, I’d feel like shit about it. It would take all the fun out of winning.

We  might’ve all had to carry around a notarized doctor’s note verifying that we were indeed the type of cripple that was officially authorized to ride public transportation That would’ve really sucked.

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Name that Cripple

 

I always thought that there ought to be a game show called Name that Cripple. It would surely become a craze that would sweep the nation.

All we’d have to do is line up three wheelchair cripples right next to each other on a street corner somewhere. The three cripples would be of the same age and race and gender and all so they’d all look pretty much alike. But one of the cripples would have something like muscular dystrophy and  the second would have something completely different like cerebral palsy and the third one would be your standard quadriplegic from a spinal cord injury.

The emcee would stop random passersby who are verts (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). And if a vert agrees to play Name that Cripple, the emcee gives them three blank cardboard placards and a marking pen. And each placard would be attached to a string and the vert contestant would write something like muscular dystrophy on the placard and hang it around the neck of whichever one they thought to be the corresponding cripple.

And if a vert contestant gets all three right, they win a valuable  prize, such as a lovely new dining room set from Broyhill. But nobody will ever get all three right because it never fails that the average vert on the street can’t tell the difference between a c.p. cripple and an m.d. cripple and a quad. They can’t tell the cripples apart without a scorecard.

This always baffles me because if I played Name that Cripple I’d be the grand champion. I can identify a cripple’s genre from a mile away. If I was looking down from a helicopter on a field of cripples, I could rattle off in no time which one was which.  I think the differences between us are bloody obvious.

But that’s probably because I’ve spent so many years hanging around with such a wide variety of cripples that I’ve developed a keen eye. I don’t think I can say the same about anything else. If I was looking down from a helicopter on a field of cows, for example, they would all just look like a bunch of cows to me.

But when it comes to cripples, I can look at a parking lot full of empty cars and tell you which car belongs to a cripple and which one doesn’t. Like for instance, if it’s a fancy sports car, it’s probably not a cripple car. I never see cripples driving or even riding around in fancy sports cars, probably because doing so is too much of a pain in the ass, what with the bucket seats and all. Or maybe it’s because fancy sports cars are too expensive for most cripples.

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Self-Diagnosed Autism

 

Recent research shows that the prevalence of autism among people age 18 and over who are on Medicaid doubled between 2011 and 2019.

I wonder if this includes people with that new strain of autism that’s been going around lately. I call it SDA, which stands for self-diagnosed autism.

I notice that there seem to be more and more people running around claiming to be autistic. But they seem like regular folks.

This seems like a triumph of marketing. Because in recent years, we’ve developed a much better understanding of autism, which is a good thing. When I was a kid, autistic people were considered to be hopelessly oblivious and so we segregated them away in institutions so we wouldn’t have to be bothered with trying to figure them out.

But now,  autism is viewed as a spectrum with a lot of different variety. Autistic people are referred to as neurodivergent. That sounds much cooler. To be neurodivergent sounds like you’re a little bit weird. And it’s cool to be a little bit weird as long as it’s the  cool kind of weird and not the weirdo kind of weird.

All this makes it easier than ever to proudly proclaim that you are autistic. I’ve never seen anyone who goes around saying that they’re crippled for the same reason I ‘m crippled. No one ever claims to have what I have, unless they really do. It would creep me out if I met somebody like that, just like autistic people are probably creeped out by people with SDA.

 Maybe people don’t try to appropriate my kind of crippledness because there isn’t much that’s vague about that which makes me crippled. There’s no spectrum involved. You either have it or you don’t.

But I think the reason people don’t self-diagnose as being crippled for the same reason I am is because there’s nothing cool about it.

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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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