Kiss Me I'm Crippled

Every year there’s a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago. All the douche bag politicians put on a green tie and march in the parade, especially if they’re campaigning.

After the parade, there are swarms of drunken people downtown wearing green plastic derbies and fake Irish stuff like that. They drink in the bars until the wee hours.

I guess the closest cripple holiday equivalent to St. Patrick’s Day would be ADA Day. That’s July 26, which is the anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. ADA Day is similar to St. Patrick’s Day in a few ways. The douche bag politicians all glom on, but they do it by issuing phony proclamations about how wonderful the ADA is. In Chicago, there’s a parade on or around ADA Day. But it’s much smaller than the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

But you don’t see swarms of drunks on the streets on ADA day. The bars aren’t packed with revelers. Nobody uses ADA Day as a good excuse to get drunk. Well, maybe some people do. I know I do, but I use Wednesday as a good excuse to get drunk.

My fourth grade teacher used to say, “Everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.” But ADA Day hasn’t gotten to the point where everyone declares themselves an honorary cripple for the day. The party stores don’t stock up with cripple-themed stuff. The people who wear green plastic derbies don’t hop into rented wheelchairs on ADA Day or meander around downtown wearing dark sunglasses and tapping a white cane. On ADA Day, they don’t wear buttons that say Kiss Me I’m Crippled.

I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. A part of me feels slighted that there isn’t the same level of appropriation of cripple culture on ADA Day. But I suppose, all things considered, it’s probably good. Because if everyone was a cripple on ADA Day, it would be really hard to find a cripple parking space. And if a douche bag politician like Paul Ryan showed up on crutches with one leg tied behind his back ready to march in the ADA Day parade, it would be just too creepy.




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Brilliance and Luck

For millions of cripples like me, Stephen Hawking was an example of how even a really really crippled person can rise above all obstacles and achieve great notoriety, as long as they’re the smartest person in the whole fucking universe.

But actually, even that wasn’t enough. No one would have known or cared how smart he was if he hadn’t been lucky, too. He was lucky that he wasn’t born as crippled as he was, or else he would probably have been sent off to a place like the state-operated boarding school for cripples I attended, which I affectionately refer to as the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). There were lots of kids there who couldn’t walk or talk or move much, like him. Nobody took them seriously. The staff gave them the basics— dress them, feed them, hose them down, place them in the TV room during idle hours.

None of his fellow inmates would’ve taken him seriously either. In fact, we would have avoided him. I know I would have. There were no big-time cripples like him in my clique, just like there were no cripples like me in the clique of the crippled jocks. In gym class, no one would have chosen him for their team. But eventually the staff would have compelled us to include him in our games. So I guess if the game was wheelchair soccer or hockey, we would’ve parked him in front of a net, called him a goalie and hoped for the best.

The teachers wouldn’t have taken him seriously either. He probably would’ve spent the day in a time-killing classroom learning about colors. No one ever would’ve ever suspected that a kid like him could be pondering the cosmos.

The doctors wouldn’t have taken him seriously either. They would’ve all said he’s going to die any minute now. Oh wait, the doctors said that about him anyway. Never mind.

And the social workers also wouldn’t have taken him seriously. Once he reached age 21 and could no longer stay at SHIT, they would have sent to a nursing home, where he would be fed and dressed and hosed down and placed in the TV room during idle hours.

But Stephen Hawking was a lucky man. By the time he became crippled, everybody already knew how fucking brilliant he was. So he could not be denied. Everyone had no choice but to take him seriously, whether they liked it or not.

Lucky for all of us it worked out that way. But too bad for those cripples who went to SHIT who weren’t the smartest person in the whole fucking universe. Or maybe they were. Who knows?


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If I Only had a Son

There are times when I really regret that I never had a son. I feel it most we I see one of those videos all over the internet where a high school football team lets a local crippled teenager score a touchdown.

You know how it goes. The kid usually has Down syndrome or autism or something like that. He’s the mascot or the water boy or something. And at the end of the game they give the kid the ball and the other team agrees not to tackle him and he runs for a touchdown while all the players on both teams escort him like a convoy of bodyguards. I’ve even seen it where the kid is in a motorized wheelchair. And the crippled kid is usually the brother or neighbor or whatever of a player and after the game that player says that’s what inspired him to arrange all this. He says he did it to bring the crippled kid joy and to make the important statement that cripples can do anything if they have enough determination, just like everybody else.

And whenever I see that I wish that just once just one player had the balls to treat that kid like a regular human being and tackle his ass. And that’s when I really wish I had a son. And I wish my son was a player on that field. Because I know no son of mine would ever patronize a crippled kid like that by letting him score a touchdown. I’d raise him better than that. He’d have enough respect for that kid to flatten him, even if he was on the same team. Or if the kid was in a motorized wheelchair, my son would sneak up behind him while he's barreling toward the end zone and flip the lever that disconnects the motors. Being my son, he’d know where that lever is.

And after the game, my son would say that his father is crippled and that’s what inspired him to tackle the kid or disconnect his motors. He’d say he did it to bring me joy and to make the important statement that not even a super determined cripple can do everything, just like everybody else.

I’d be so proud of him.



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Can Smart Ass Cripple be Rehabilitated?

Pretty much every cripple sooner or later deals with the Department of Rehabilitation. I know I have. But I wonder if I can be rehabilitated. Because in order to qualify to do business with the Department of Rehabilitation, must one necessarily have achieved a state of habilitation at some previous point in their life? Because it seems to me that to rehabilitate someone is to return them to habilitation. And if that’s the case, it makes me wonder if there was ever a point in my life when I was habilitated. And what event unhabilitated me so that I need rehabilitation?

So I looked up the various definitions of habilitate. One thing it means is to clothe or dress. Well if that’s the case, then yes, I am and have often been habilitated. In fact, I spend most of every day habilitated. The only time I’m not habilitated in that sense is when I bathe, sleep, take a dump and write my Smart Ass Cripple stuff. But I don’t think that’s the definition the Department of Rehabilitation applies.

Another definition is to fit or equip a mine for operation. Well, seeing as I’m not a mine, that probably doesn’t apply either.

But another definition is to make fit. Hmmm. So then rehabilitation would be to make fit again. So then the question is, was I ever fit in the first place? I think the premise that the Department of Rehabilitation must operate under is that all humans are fit until they become crippled, which then renders them unfit and in need of refitting. But in my case, the event that rendered me crippled was being born. So maybe the last time I was fit was in the womb. But maybe not even then. Because my crippledness is a genetic condition, which took effect the moment my mother’s egg was raped by my father’s sperm. So maybe I’ve been unfit since conception.

Don’t get me wrong. The Department of Rehabilitation has done right by me, in general. They paid for my college education. They pay the wages of the members of my pit crew who get me dressed every morning. So maybe I should go back to that first definition. Maybe when one of the guys puts clothes on me, he is returning me to my previous state of habilitation.

So maybe I can be rehabilitated after all.


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