When you’ve been a cripple as long as I have, you’ve been subjected to many indignities, which lead you to develop deep, dark aversions. Like I can remember the day when you couldn’t find a sippy cup that wasn’t embarrassing.
Sippy cups have always been a great piece of cheap assistive technology for cripples. If you want to drink a rum and coke, for instance, it’s good to drink it out of a sippy cup, especially if you’re the kind of cripple that’s prone to spilling, like a quadriplegic with no grip or a spastic. You get the most out of your rum and coke if you drink it out of the sippy cup because it practically takes an earthquake to spill it.
But way back when, the sippy cup manufacturers thought their product was only for children so no matter how hard a grown-up cripple tried, you couldn’t find a sippy cup without Winnie the Fucking Pooh or My Little Goddam Pony on it. So in those dark days, if you wanted to fully enjoy a rum and coke, you had to risk ridicule.
But then Ronald Reagan was elected and everyone started running their asses off. The demand for sippy cups exploded. Joggers wanted sippy cups. People who work out wanted sippy cups. Even ordinary people who were now running their asses off from job to job wanted sippy cups. So the sippy cup industry responded and now there are an endless variety of adult sippy cups on the market. This generation of cripples can now get shitfaced with dignity.
But I can’t get over my aversion to juvenile sippy cups. Seeing one is a stark reminder of how things used to be. Powdered eggs are another aversion. Whenever I encounter or even think about powdered eggs, I’m immediately ripped back in time to my days as an adolescent in the state-operated cripple boarding school. Nothing evokes that unsettling memory more than powdered eggs, the staple of institutional cuisine. Every cripple who’s been stuck in a nursing home or some such place knows what I’m talking about. Every goddam morning you lift the lid off your breakfast plate and there they are again—powdered eggs, so cold and green.
Another aversion is sports mascots. I hate sports mascots like some people hate clowns. Don’t get me wrong, I for sure hate clowns. They’ve scarred me too. They remind me of those clown-infested, do-gooder parties for crippled children I attended as a kid. The clowns immediately swarmed you, blew up long balloons and twisted them into poodle sculptures for you to take home as a souvenir. I have an aversion to balloon poodles too. But sports mascots are as obnoxious as clowns multiplied by 5 million. A sports mascot can spot a cripple in a crowd of 80,000 like a soaring eagle can spot a fish in the ocean below. And the mascot pounces, leaping onto the cripple’s lap and planting a sloppy wet kiss. Sports mascots seem to think their calling in life is to cheer up all the cripples. I’ve has this recurring dream where I’m kicking the living crap out of that mascot with the enormous baseball for a head. And then I wake up and realize it was just a beautiful dream.
But my deepest aversion is plaid blankets. Plaid blankets are invalid blankets. The forlorn invalid always sits silent in a clunky, oversized wheelchair, a blanket wrapped around his legs. And the blanket is always a muted plaid. Plaid rhymes with sad. Even if it’s 85 degrees, the invalid’s legs are always wrapped in the invalid blanket. So don’t even think about trying to wrap a plaid blanket around my legs or I’ll break your neck. I don’t care if it’s 500 below zero and the consequence of not wrapping my legs in a plaid blanket will be frostbite and amputation. Stay the hell away from me with your plaid blankets. I’m not an invalid.
I know I should get over it. I should suck it up like I did in the old days when I drank my rum and coke out of a happy-ass sippy cup, public opinion be damned. I should do like we all do on those days when it’s so damn cold that we finally break down and wear that really warm hat that looks incredibly dopey—a stocking cap with dancing snowmen and a fuzzy pompon on top. Why do real warm hats always look embarrassingly dopey? Are the people who make them getting their sadistic jollies?
I know I’m a mess, being a prisoner of all my debilitating aversions. But give me a break. I’ve been crippled for a long, long time. It’s brutal
Sippy cups have always been a great piece of cheap assistive technology for cripples. If you want to drink a rum and coke, for instance, it’s good to drink it out of a sippy cup, especially if you’re the kind of cripple that’s prone to spilling, like a quadriplegic with no grip or a spastic. You get the most out of your rum and coke if you drink it out of the sippy cup because it practically takes an earthquake to spill it.
But way back when, the sippy cup manufacturers thought their product was only for children so no matter how hard a grown-up cripple tried, you couldn’t find a sippy cup without Winnie the Fucking Pooh or My Little Goddam Pony on it. So in those dark days, if you wanted to fully enjoy a rum and coke, you had to risk ridicule.
But then Ronald Reagan was elected and everyone started running their asses off. The demand for sippy cups exploded. Joggers wanted sippy cups. People who work out wanted sippy cups. Even ordinary people who were now running their asses off from job to job wanted sippy cups. So the sippy cup industry responded and now there are an endless variety of adult sippy cups on the market. This generation of cripples can now get shitfaced with dignity.
But I can’t get over my aversion to juvenile sippy cups. Seeing one is a stark reminder of how things used to be. Powdered eggs are another aversion. Whenever I encounter or even think about powdered eggs, I’m immediately ripped back in time to my days as an adolescent in the state-operated cripple boarding school. Nothing evokes that unsettling memory more than powdered eggs, the staple of institutional cuisine. Every cripple who’s been stuck in a nursing home or some such place knows what I’m talking about. Every goddam morning you lift the lid off your breakfast plate and there they are again—powdered eggs, so cold and green.
Another aversion is sports mascots. I hate sports mascots like some people hate clowns. Don’t get me wrong, I for sure hate clowns. They’ve scarred me too. They remind me of those clown-infested, do-gooder parties for crippled children I attended as a kid. The clowns immediately swarmed you, blew up long balloons and twisted them into poodle sculptures for you to take home as a souvenir. I have an aversion to balloon poodles too. But sports mascots are as obnoxious as clowns multiplied by 5 million. A sports mascot can spot a cripple in a crowd of 80,000 like a soaring eagle can spot a fish in the ocean below. And the mascot pounces, leaping onto the cripple’s lap and planting a sloppy wet kiss. Sports mascots seem to think their calling in life is to cheer up all the cripples. I’ve has this recurring dream where I’m kicking the living crap out of that mascot with the enormous baseball for a head. And then I wake up and realize it was just a beautiful dream.
But my deepest aversion is plaid blankets. Plaid blankets are invalid blankets. The forlorn invalid always sits silent in a clunky, oversized wheelchair, a blanket wrapped around his legs. And the blanket is always a muted plaid. Plaid rhymes with sad. Even if it’s 85 degrees, the invalid’s legs are always wrapped in the invalid blanket. So don’t even think about trying to wrap a plaid blanket around my legs or I’ll break your neck. I don’t care if it’s 500 below zero and the consequence of not wrapping my legs in a plaid blanket will be frostbite and amputation. Stay the hell away from me with your plaid blankets. I’m not an invalid.
I know I should get over it. I should suck it up like I did in the old days when I drank my rum and coke out of a happy-ass sippy cup, public opinion be damned. I should do like we all do on those days when it’s so damn cold that we finally break down and wear that really warm hat that looks incredibly dopey—a stocking cap with dancing snowmen and a fuzzy pompon on top. Why do real warm hats always look embarrassingly dopey? Are the people who make them getting their sadistic jollies?
I know I’m a mess, being a prisoner of all my debilitating aversions. But give me a break. I’ve been crippled for a long, long time. It’s brutal
I am imagining watching a football game in Dickinson North Dakota, where the mascot is the "midgets." I'd hate to have that mascot pick me out of a crowd.
ReplyDeleteThis post just got linked on Twitter by Roger Ebert. I'm hitting the tip jar right now, and all you other mugs clicking over for the survivor humor better do the same! :D
ReplyDeleteThat was brilliant. Thank you to Roger Ebert @ebertchicago for posting a link to you on his twitter feed...
ReplyDeleteRe: the aesthetics of really warm hats -- I've been knitting for over 30 years and can cheerfully confirm that yes, sadistic jollies is exactly what we're going for. It's mostly payback for all the painstakingly fine-gauge work we do that non-knitters ask for and then won't wear because it doesn't have a designer label on it.
ReplyDeleteYou rock so hard.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Roger Ebert for landing me here. This is awesome - Winnie the fucking pooh! I will think about this and laugh!
ReplyDeletethat's how I got here too. Great blog.
DeleteSo in those dark days, if you wanted to fully enjoy a rum and coke, you had to risk ridicule.
ReplyDeletePossible responses:
*You mean aside from the ridicule you'd receive for drinkin rum and coke?
*But wait a minute, isn't rum and coke for kids?
*Enjoy? I didn't think anyone enjoyed a rum and coke beyond 17.
Okay, that's it. Please remember these were offered up in the universal spirit of good-natured assholery. Feel free to tear me a new one as you see fit.
And jokes aside, your bitter, strident and acerbic rants always cheer me up.
This is fucking brilliant!
ReplyDeleteAndrew Sullivan has linked to this as well through his blog. It is remarkable. Thanks for so clearly expressing your feelings. I have a disabled child, and see the "Mascot" reaction as well.
ReplyDeleteAaargh! I want my aversion to people in funny costumes to remain in my subconscious where it belongs. Despite what they say, the bright light of day does not make it better.
ReplyDeleteI forgot about mascots, no wonder I stopped going to baseball games!
ReplyDeleteNever was in a state-run institution (unless you count The Ohio State University) but I remember those powdered eggs all too well from my poverty-stricken youth in Appalachia. I always thought powdered eggs were the state's way of saying, "That's what you get for having the nerve to be poor."
ReplyDeleteBrilliant!
ReplyDeleteEbert sent me. Great recommendation for reading. I will be staying awhile.
ReplyDeletethanks to Ebert's TED talk i got here...
ReplyDeleteMan, you should consider writing a book. and if you are up to a screenplay, lemme know...
Ebert's TED talk got me here... You are one sarcastic genius!
ReplyDeleteHeh, I certainly didn't expect to be the first to be pulled in by the TED talk, but I was expecting a lot more of a following considering the content you provide. Sarcasm for the win, good sir. I rather like how you lead into your tales, I shall be following your work going forward
ReplyDeleteThe best blanket for wheelies is a Podlet--the others get tangled in the wheels. And they're not plaid!
ReplyDeleteEgads, powdered eggs. I finally realized why I had an aversion to breakfast foods for so many years and where it started.
Sorry, Podlett, misspelled.
ReplyDeleteI want to share this on FB and I'm being sippy cup blocked. Grrrrrr.....
ReplyDeleteI too am sharing your 'wisdom' with my FB friends.
ReplyDeletesweet blog, ya could say im a covert cripple, even cripples dont know im among them half the time, and i to have many of the same style of thoughts during my day, and with the advantage of being able to sneak up on them i also get to hear the ablebodied and there confesions of how handicapped they are, its a real gas at times, then they find out about my being crippled at some point and all of a sudden im like a lepor, ya its a gas sometimes and other times when they suck up to cripples i want to smack the shit ouf the two faced oh were helping them by being condesending and crap. oh sorry i went into smart ass mode. kinda funny since i was born without an asshole and crapped my pants most of my life, i tend to make up for it by being a smart ass or being an ashole and telling people how to deal with shit, i sometimes forget just because they can crap normal that they know what shit smells like or do they.
ReplyDeleteit was only a miricle i did not end up in a state hospital like you mention.
ReplyDeleteone thing us smart asses have that others do not is a graspe of reality, how to be in it as well as how to escape it.
vatrls syndrome is a real bitch, allot of run forrest run crap when the find out im not R, or theyf ind out on a football feild i run cirlces around them, what they think crippled is useless, man do they realy get but hurt , then i say some smart ass coment like ya, i have to be fast to get tot he bathroom, i have to be smart enough to know which way the wind blows so you dont smell my shitty ass, i have to hide the pain of my twisted(not curved)spine or you will realy start being a pain in the ass asking me if that was my back or gas, sometimes my back does hurt from shit leaving my ass so dam fast. Ya im greatful my mom did not go on the DR's advise, i would have been a lab rat, ohwait they did do that, from the short bus on the way to school the took a wrong turn and instead of special ed i was dropped of at special forces, boy is the joke on them out there playng rambo.