There’s a very scary neighborhood on the north side of town. I try to avoid going there at all costs.
In this neighborhood is a gated community that looks like a cozy gingerbread village. It’s a home for rescue cripples. It’s run by nuns.
In this gingerbread bread village I imagine they treat their rescue cripples like I treat my rescue dog. I treat my rescue dog very well. He gets plenty of food. He has a warm bed and an arsenal of toys. My rescue dog is well taken care of. But I never let him outside without a leash. First and foremost, I must keep him safe.
He’s a rescue dog because somebody gave him up. But that’s okay. There are plenty of people who take in dogs like him. And I call the cripples in the gingerbread village rescue cripples because somebody gave them up. And the nuns took them in.
Seeing that gingerbread village unsettles me so much because I think of how with a wee twist of fate I could’ve ended up as one of those rescue cripples. There but for the grace of the fictitious God go I. When I was a kid my mother hauled my crippled ass everywhere. And my crippled sister’s ass too. My mother got us dressed and out of bed and flung us into the car and flung our wheelchairs into the tailgate and drove us around. But suppose my mother got run over by a bus or just threw her back out or something. Bam! That’s it! My sister and I become instant rescue cripples. At that time about the only option for a crippled kid or adult with no family to take care of them was to surrender to the nuns.
And living in a place like that, I never would’ve gotten laid. That’s probably the number one responsibility of nuns and others who watch over flocks of rescue cripples —to make sure nobody gets laid. It’s the opposite of panda breeding. We put pandas in captivity together because we want them to fuck and multiply. We put rescue cripples in captivity together because we don’t want them to fuck. The involuntary vow of chastity is easily enforced. I don’t imagine rescue cripples get many opportunities to get laid. I don’t think the rescue cripple group field trips go to singles’ bars. And nobody who’s out cruising to get laid stops by the home for rescue cripples. And if they did I’d wonder about them. It would be the old Groucho dilemma: I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member.
And who knows, if I ended up in the gingerbread village I might’ve been the big cripple on campus, what with my leadership abilities and all-- president of the residents’ council, the whole works. And today I’d be the venerable elder statesman. I might have adjusted to the rescue cripple lifestyle quite nicely and lived a safe and comfortable life, never knowing what I was missing.
And that’s what scares me most.
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