Ah yes, I remember back in the days before cripples like me were invested. What heady times those were! Like back in the 1970s, when I was still living in my mother’s house and there was no such thing as cripple-accessible public transportation, at least not in these parts. At one point there were big headlines about how the bus drivers and other public transit workers were threatening to go on strike. Everybody was all panicky, but I just sat back and laughed. Let ‘em strike ‘til they’re blue in the face, I gloated to myself. I’ll still get around just fine, thank you very much. I’ll still have my cripple van and my mother to drive it so screw all you all pathetic, interdependent suckers! Who’s the one getting left behind now? Ha!
But now I’m invested. The outside world isn’t the outside world anymore. I no longer live with mom and all the buses are accessible. So now a strike by transit workers would make me panicky as well because what if I want to go somewhere? Or what about the people who come get me in and out of bed? I call them my pit crew. If public transportation is shut down, how are they going to get to me? I’ll shrivel up and die!
Sometimes when I look out of the window and I feel dread because the weather is brutal as hell, like there’s an apocalyptic blizzard and it 900 below zero, I wonder how I’d feel if I was sealed away in some climate –controlled nursing home where it’s always 72 degrees, just like on Leave it to Beaver. I think it would be de ja vu. As I looked out of the window at those bundled-up losers, the exhilarating smugness would return at last! Don’t you frost-bitten sheep wish you could be like me, with nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do 24/7 except watch Columbo (where it’s always 72 degrees)? This is like Club Med!
But I’m invested. I’m not sealed away it a climate-controlled nursing home. So when I look out the window and the weather is brutal as hell, I get panicky because what if I want to go somewhere? Or what about the people who come get me in and out of bed? If there’s an apocalyptic blizzard and it’s 900 below zero, how are they going to get to me? I’ll shrivel up and die!
I am no longer sovereign and strong, immune from that which befuddles the masses. I’m invested.
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