That Brisk Day When Cripple Oppression in America Officially Came to an End

Apparently there once was a time, long long ago, when cripples were treated rather poorly in this country. I know it’s hard to believe but it really is true. I double checked the facts just to be sure.

It seems that back in those dark days cripples were so disregarded and devalued that many of them were locked up in institutions. Cripples had a real hard time getting jobs back then. And they couldn’t get into a lot of buildings because the entrances had steps and stuff like that.

But that all ended on March 4, 1933 at noon, to be precise. That was the day we inaugurated a crippled president. And that’s how we know in America when a previously oppressed sector of the citizenry is officially no longer oppressed. When a single member of that sector rises to the pinnacle, it proves that all the old barriers to advancement no longer exist.

We learned this on January 20, 2009, when, for the first time, we inaugurated somebody besides a white man. That was the day racism ended. The racists, realizing they were licked, packed up and went home. The KKK threw in the towel. And so now we know that with all the obstacles eliminated, those from that sector who can’t similarly transcend their circumstances are probably just too damn lazy.

But it’s a funny thing though. The last time I checked, I do believe there were still some institutionalized cripples. And, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there’s still a cripple or two without a job. And I could swear that right down the street from me is a pizza place that I’ve never gone into because the entrance has three steps.

How could this be the case when the era of cripple oppression in America abruptly ended on a brisk afternoon more than 80 years ago? There’s only one possible explanation. The reason the entrance of that pizza place right down the street has three steps is because I’m just too damn lazy.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Contributing to the tip jar, purchasing books and subscribing through Amazon Kindle keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

The Evolution of Playtime

I never realized it before but when I was a wee criplet I must’ve been full of self-loathing because I was crippled. It’s a wonder I didn’t grow up to be an axe murderer.

The criplets of today are way ahead. There are plenty of crippled dolls around to help them feel better about themselves. They came out with a crippled Barbie friend a long time ago. And now there’s a crippled Lego kid. All the experts on child development agree that this is good. There comes a time in the life of every crippled child, or every child who’s different for that matter, when they long to see people like themselves represented positively in pop culture.

I didn’t have any crippled dolls when I was a criplet. I suppose if wanted to have one, I would have had to make one myself by hacking an arm or leg off one of my G.I. Joes or something. (I don't think being without genitals counts as crippled in the case.) But I never felt the urge to have a crippled doll. Never once crossed my mind. If one of my G.I. Joes came up missing a limb, I either would have tossed it in the trash or relegated it to playing the role of the wounded guy.

Criplets today can at least occasionally see a crippled kid who looks like them in a movie or on television. For a long time I never saw any crippled kids like me in movies or on television and I never particularity wanted to. In fact, the first time I saw a crippled kid on television, I was horrified. It was one of those telethons and they trotted out a crippled kid and everybody gushed over him and patted him on the head until I wanted to puke. I was terrified that the next time I went out in public everybody would treat me that way. So I prayed that no crippled kid would ever be allowed on television ever again.

And when I was a kid, none of the storybooks told stories about crippled kids. If an adult asked me if I wanted to read a storybook about a crippled kid I would have said hell no. I would have been afraid that it would be a story about a crippled kid who appears on a telethon and everybody gushes over him and pats him on the head until I want to puke.

It just goes to show how much I secretly must’ve hated being crippled. The less I was reminded of it the better. When ambushed with the reality, I tried to drown it out with the white noise of denial and avoidance. That's what playtime was for.

The only reason I didn’t become an axe murderer was because I’m crippled. I can’t lift an axe.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Contributing to the tip jar, purchasing books and subscribing through Amazon Kindle keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Marriage Equality for Broke Ass Cripples

Now that same sex marriage is legal in every state, gay broke ass cripples who want to get married will be screwed over by Social Security the same as opposite sex broke ass cripples who want to get married. That’s marriage equality.

The broke assiest of the broke ass cripples are those who receive Social Security SSI monthly payments. The richest of them gets the SSI maximum, which is $733 for an individual or $1,100 for a married couple when both receive SSI.

Now I suck at math but when I add $733 and $733 I get $1466. So if two broke ass cripples get married, they each get docked $183.

And if you think you can get around that by living together in sin and not getting married, ha ha ha on you. The Social Security people can investigate you and if they find that you and your "roommate" do stuff married people do, like put both of your names on your mortgage or introduce the other as your spouse, they can dock you anyway.

I’m not bringing you the breaking news here. This marriage penalty has been around forever. Various movements of cripples and cripophiles have tried to strike it down.

But it endures. I don’t know why. I wonder if it’s because some people see broke ass cripple marriage as a threat to the sanctity of marriage. Maybe they believe it violates the traditional definition of marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman who aren’t both broke ass cripples. It’s the old slippery slope argument. “If we let two broke ass cripples get married, then why not let a man marry a giraffe?”

Or maybe two broke ass cripples getting married goes against the Bible somehow. So I checked out Leviticus. There’s all kind of stuff in there about who it’s immoral to have sex with, like any woman who is another man’s slave, but nothing specifically or vaguely addressing broke ass cripples. In Biblical times, I guess cripples marrying was too ridiculous of an idea to even ponder.

So the force standing in the way of two broke ass cripples openly and freely getting married must be a force much more powerful than morality. It must be money. I’m sure the Congressional Budget Office or some such sober entity has determined that the global economy will collapse and anarchy will ensue if broke ass cripples are allowed to keep $183 a month.

Yep, two broke ass cripples getting married is a threat to our very civilization.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Contributing to the tip jar, purchasing books and subscribing through Amazon Kindle keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

The Plight of the Promless Cripple

Some institutions of oppression are so inherently heinous, so purposefully designed to prop up the ruling class that they cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.

Two such institutions are slavery and proms. When it comes to proms I am an ardent abolitionist.

I am one of the many promless cripples. My high school was a state–operated boarding school for cripples, which I affectionately refer to as the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). We didn’t have proms at SHIT, which is probably just as well. They probably would have been exceedingly lame affairs where we all put on a clean shirt, reported to the gym and hung around with the same cripples we hung around with every other day.

And I imagine most mainstreamed cripples who weren’t educated in a segregated compound like me are nonetheless still promless. Even if they went to schools that had proms they probably didn’t go because proms aren’t exactly freak-friendly zones. And cripples aren’t the only promless humans. I know there must also be millions of promless verts (which is short for verticals, which is cripple slang for people who can walk). They are promless by choice. They could’ve gone to prom but they chose not to because proms, they’ll say, are nothing more than a bourgeois rite of passage designed to reaffirm the supremacy of the jocks and cheerleaders and other elites. In other words, they couldn’t get a date.

But that’s okay. Being a promless cripple has served me well. It has sharpened my sense of justice by giving me a feeling of solidarity with the rejects of the world, those who have been callously left behind. It has taught me the importance of embracing one’s inner freak by renouncing false measuring sticks of self-worth. Fuck those meathead jocks and their meatheadocracy!

That’s why I’m worried that God has apparently told ex-quarterback Tim Tebow to dedicate himself to addressing the plight of promless cripples. Coming up soon is the second annual Night to Shine sponsored by Tebow’s foundation. This is a night where churches all over the world organize special “proms” for cripples only. And every cripple who shows up gets crowned king or queen.

But I’m worried that God is setting up poor Tebow for failure again, just like he did when he told him to be a pro quarterback. First, this is a classic case of trying to redeem the unredeemable. There’s no such thing as an egalitarian prom. It defeats the purpose. It’s an oxymoron. If a prom can’t be snobby and cliquish, what’s the point? Second, how can everybody be king or queen? Again, it defeats the purpose. A king is the guy who’s in charge of everything. A queen is the wife or daughter of the guy who’s in charge of everything. If everybody’s in charge of everything, that’s chaos!

Third, if Tebow succeeds in bringing about the extinction of promless cripples, he’ll be doing more harm than good. He’ll be delaying each of these cripples from experiencing that wonderful blast of liberating epiphany that comes when they say to themselves fuck those meathead jocks and their meatheadocracy! This is a formative moment in every cripple’s life.

Tebow would better serve cripples and the rest of humanity if he took a more litigious approach. His foundation should organize a team of lawyers to sue every prom and force them not only to admit every cripple but to crown a cripple the prom king and queen.

If that happened we wouldn’t have to worry about abolishing proms. They’d soon abolish themselves.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Contributing to the tip jar, purchasing books and subscribing through Amazon Kindle keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Flying Monkeys

Being crippled but not always looking like you’re crippled must really suck. It must be like having monkeys flying out of your butt.

Among those who are crippled but don’t always look like they’re crippled are folks with stuff like fibromyalgia and the kind of chemical sensitivity where a whiff of perfume can knock you on your ass. One day you’re running a marathon and the next day you’re flat in bed. It must suck constantly having to prove you’re crippled when you know damn well you are. It must especially suck when it’s time to cash in on the few good things that come with being crippled, like Social Security and legal pot. But hey, the uncrippled majority demands hard evidence! They’ve reached the cripple saturation point. There are so many different kinds of cripples and new breeds are popping up all the time. To keep track of them all requires a scorecard a mile long.

So when you really are crippled but nobody believes you are that must be like having monkeys flying out of your butt. Because imagine an average, uncrippled Jane/Joe going through life merrily minding their own business when all of a sudden a monkey flies out of his/her butt. If it happened to me, my first reaction would be, “What was that! I could swear a monkey just flew out of my butt!” But if it didn’t happen again soon, I’d happily dismiss it as some sort of illusion. Maybe it was a trick of light or just the wind. But then it happens again and again until there’s no denying it. "Oh my God, I really do have monkeys flying out of my butt!" I’d yearn for the comforting camaraderie of people with my same malady! But I know nobody will believe me if I say, “I have monkeys flying out of my butt!” A person could get committed for something like that! So I’d convince myself that I must be the only one in the world with monkeys flying out of my butt and I'd suffer in sad, solitary silence, longing for the kind of breakthrough that will only come when a monkey flies out of the butt of a beloved celebrity. Someone like Harrison Ford maybe? I mean, I don’t wish monkeys flying out of your butt on anyone. But if it has to happen to someone, let it be Harrison Ford. Everybody believes and trusts what Harrison Ford says. Harrison Ford is an American institution! I’d fantasize about him holding a press conference to say, “I’m here to announce that I have monkeys flying out of my butt.” And I shout hallelujah! Sweet vindication! Now our voices will finally be heard! And people all over the world step forward to proclaim that they too have monkeys flying out of their butts! And Harrison Ford is praised for his courage! And the nation rallies around him! And Congress appropriates billions in spending for research into the cause and prevention of monkeys flying out of people’s butts! And Harrison Ford is invited to attend the State of the Union address! And the president introduces him and he rises to a standing ovation!

And a monkey flies out of his butt!



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Contributing to the tip jar, purchasing books and subscribing through Amazon Kindle keeps us going. Please help if you can.)