No Thanks , I'll Sleep in

 

 Apparently there is some kind of injection that’s a treatment for that which makes me and other people like me crippled. It’s not like the Hollywood version of cripple treatments and cures. It doesn’t make us leap up out of wheelchairs and go waterskiing or anything. From what I hear, about all this treatment does is somewhat slow the progression of that which makes us crippled.

I don’t know much about this treatment because I haven’t looked into it much. And I don’t think I’m going to look into it because I have a couple of friends who are trying it out and it doesn’t sound like much fun to me. First of all, this injection must cost a zillion dollars because my friends say they had to fight like hell with their insurance companies to get them to pay for it. And I don’t know about you, but for me there is no endeavor that’s more soul-crushing and makes me feel more like I’ve had precious hours of life stolen from me than fighting like hell with my insurance company. That’s why everybody hates insurance companies.

My friends also tell me that the injection goes directly into their spinal cords. Whaaaaat? Need I say more about that?

But to me, the most intolerable deal-breaking aspect of it all is that my friends have to be at their doctor’s office bright and early to receive their injection, like about 8 a.m. So that means that on Injection Day, they have to get up around 4 a.m. I don’t know why it has to be that way. Why can’t they get injected in the middle of the afternoon? It’s almost like the medical professionals have to make sure that getting treated and/or cured entails some element of suffering for us. Otherwise they’re letting us off the hook too easy.

So, to recap, if I want to get the treatment I’d have to fight like hell with my Insurance company in order to receive an injection directly into my spine. And worst of all, I’d have to get up at 4 a.m!

I know what will happen. I’ll hear the alarm at 4 a.m. and I’ll say fuck it. I don’t even think I’d be motivated enough to get up even if the treatment might make me leap up out of my wheelchair and go waterskiing. I’ve lived this long without waterskiing. At this point in my life, I’d rather sleep in. That’s about all that’s left on my bucket list. I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's what it is.

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Ask Smart Ass Cripple: Volume 5, Opus 42 in D-Flat Minor

 

 

Dear Smart Ass Cripple,

Why do blind people wear sunglasses?

Eternally yours,

Always Questioning

 

Dear Always Questioning,

I think blind people always wearing sunglasses is just some made-up Hollywood bull shit. Because I’ve known a shitload of blind people throughout my long and prosperous life and none of them ever wear sunglasses—not even when it’s sunny.

And all that stuff about blind people feeling your face so they can get an idea what you look like is some Hollywood bull shit, too. No blind person has ever asked me if they could feel my face. I know that doesn’t necessarily prove my point. There could be a variety of reasons why blind people wouldn’t want to feel my particular face. Maybe they think they’re better off with a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach when it comes to my face.  Or maybe they’ve been warned by sighted people that exploring my face wouldn’t be a pleasant journey.  But like I said, I’ve been around a lot of blind people and some of them have been quite drunk. So you’d think the odds are that at least one of them would’ve been drunk enough to ask to feel my face by now. And I’ve never seen a blind person feeling up anybody else’s face either. Maybe that’s not the kind of thing they do in public. I don’t know.

Another thing I can tell you is that I’ve never met one blind person who admits to taking acid. Every once in a while I get to know a blind person well enough to where I feel comfortable asking them if they ever took acid. I ask them that because I heard that the jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was blind as hell, claimed he could see when he took acid. I imagine he saw things, though probably what he saw weren’t the things that were actually in front of him at the time. So that’s why I’ve asked a few blind people if they ever took acid because I want to know if they saw things and what they saw. But so far none have fessed up that they took acid.

Actually, I take back what I said about sunglasses. I sort of know one blind person who wears sunglasses a lot. But I don’t feel like I know him well enough to ask him why. I really ought to make the effort to get to know him better, because he seems like the type of guy who probably took acid.

 

Dear Smart Ass Cripple,

If you could say one thing to your younger self, what would it be?

Warmly,

The Great Contemplator

 

Dear Contemplator,

If I could say one thing to my younger self, it would definitely be, “What in the hell possessed you to organize that cripple square dancing event?”

Way back when, I used to organize social events for cripples. And for some reason, I put together a square dance once. I don’t know what the hell came over me! I know there’s nothing more cornball than square dancing. It’s the kind of activity they’d have in a fucking nursing home.

I have this fear that someday I’m going to be up for a seat on the Supreme Court or something and somebody will come forward and reveal that I once organized a  cripple square dance event and then everybody will think I must secretly be cornball as hell and I'll be sunk. All I can do is hope and pray that everyone who showed up for my cripple square dance is dead.

Am I a "High-Functioning" Cripple?

 

Ever since I was a kid I’ve heard certain cripples referred to as “high-functioning.”

Every cripple wants to be thought of as high-functioning, even though nobody knows exactly what it means. But it sure sounds nice, doesn’t it? People take you a lot more seriously when they think you’re high-functioning. It separates you from the lowly cripples. It puts you among the cripple elite.

So I’ve thought a lot over the years about whether or not I can rightfully call myself high-functioning. But I still don’t know. I guess the problem is I don’t know the calculation for determining which cripples are high-functioning. It seems to me that the way this is done by comparing one cripple to another.

But even when I do that, I still don’t know where I stand. Because what if you compare me to some brawny cripple who’s won a zillion gold medals in the Paralympics? In that case, I always come out looking like Tiny fucking Tim.

Is that fair? It’s like comparing apples to cerebral palsies. Maybe the only fair way to determine if a cripple is high-functioning is to compare them just to cripples of the same genre. But is that fair? It might distort the concept of high-functioning all to hell. I mean, if you compare two cripples who have Lou Gehrig’s disease, then the one who blinks is high-functioning.

It looks to me like there is no officially recognized standard for determining which cripples deserve to be deemed high-functioning. It’s all subjective. So I’ll stick to comparing myself only to cripples within my own genre. Because according to a lot of dumbass doctors, cripples of my genre are supposed to die before we get very far into adulthood. And I’m still alive, so I guess that makes me high-functioning.

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