If someone claims to be a guru and you want test them to find out if they really are a guru, play a little game of Stump the Guru. It’s easy to play. Just ask the guru question after question until the guru finally answers with “Hell if I know. “ That’s when you know this guru has passed the test and just might actually be a guru. Anyone wise enough to be a guru has to know that no one knows everything. When they can say “Hell if I know,” it shows that they are truly enlightened.
But that’s not the answer most people want to hear from a guru. When truth-seekers drag themselves all the way up to a mountaintop in Tibet to ask the guru and all they get is a “Hell if I know,” they’ll be pissed and demand their money back. But those people don’t know a great truth when it bites them in the butt. They insist that their gurus be like fortune cookies and have a saying to offer every time they’re cracked open.
That’s why Smart Ass Cripple has always been a crappy crippled guru/role model. When the little criplets and or their parents come unto me seeking guidance through the enchanted land of crippledom, they’re usually disappointed. Usually about the best I can offer up is a shrug and a “Hell if I know.” Even after more than a half century of living in crippledom, there’s only two bits of guidance I can offer:
1) Sooner or later, you’re going to piss off the guy who cleans up messes at the grocery store. Whenever I hear, “Clean up on aisle 12,” I cringe because I know that the frustrated guy rolling the mop bucket will shoot me a dirty look. They always assume that the cripple spazzed out and made the mess. Once I was in a grocery store and somebody knocked over an entire wine display. About a dozen bottles of red wine shattered on the floor. It looked like a fucking bloodbath! And oh man, that pissed off clean up guy shot me a scorcher of a dirty look. Whenever I hear, “Clean up on aisle 12,” I feel like knocking over the nearest jar of mayonnaise. I’ll get blamed anyway so I might as well get my money’s worth.
2) When coming out of an elevator, do the opposite of what any walking person instructs you to do. A weird thing about cripples is we come out of elevators backwards. Most elevators are either too small or too crowded to turn a wheelchair around so we roll straight in but we have to back out. Any walking person coming out of an elevator backwards looks like a moron but for cripples it’s normal. So when a bipedal human says, “When you come out the elevator, turn right,” remember for you that means turn left because everything’s all backwards. Once I really hand to pee so I went into this building and the security guard told me to go to the second floor and turn left to find the bathroom. So I went to the second floor and turned left and I got so lost that I practically ended up in Egypt before I realized how I screwed up.
Those are the only things about crippledom I know for sure.
Well okay, there is one more thing I know for sure.
3) Beware of long tablecloths. I’m talking about those tablecloths that hang down all the way to the floor. Long tablecloths and wheelchairs are mortal enemies because you pull under the table and the cloth gets all tangled in the wheel but you don’t know it so then you back away and it’s like that trick where the magician yanks the tablecloth away and everything stays on the table, except nothing stays on the table. Everything crashes to the floor. And they only have long tablecloths at fancy-ass dinners like testimonials. And it’s especially embarrassing if the testimonial dinner is for you and the emcee says what a fine example of human dignity you are and then you come up to accept your plaque and you bring the tablecloth and everything on the table with you.
Those are for sure the only things about crippledom I know for sure. Besides that, “Hell if I know.”
Twenty-some-odd years ago, Accent on Living magazine ran a cute article about scientific rules about having a disability. I don't still have it, and it is under different ownership and has a different name since Ray Cheever died. The only rule I remember distinctly was listed as #1. If the length of the arm of a disabled person is N, then anything such person needs to reach will always be N + 1 away. There were something like ten or fifteen rules. Somewhere further down the list was one about people with disabilities not being allowed to have sex. Another one nearby was about how people with disabilities are considered strange if they even want to have sex.
ReplyDeleteOccasionall you could slightly alter your response to, "It's the hell I know".
ReplyDeletehahahaha. Oh, let me: #1 If you ask a stranger to pump up your power chair, they will tell you to stand up from it first. Go to a gas station, the fumes make them smarter.
ReplyDeleteAnd for Guru checking, ask: "What is the purpose of Pi?" If they answer anything other than, "To hold whipped cream," well, YOU do the math.
All very practical advice. If they need more than that, they've got bigger problems than needing a guru anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnother rule for females : there will always be a mother with at least three kids under the age of 5 using the handicapped bathroom stall trying to get all of the little brats to "go potty" when you desperately need to go.
ReplyDelete