I always love giving tips to
young criplets about ways I’ve found to navigate through the world as a
cripple. I strongly believe that young people represent the future and it’s not just my obligation but my honor to use the
benefit of my experience to help them get ahead.
One of the first life
challenges every wheelchair cripple faces is finding an adequate vessel to piss
into. We wheelchair cripples (who have penises) piss from our wheelchairs, sitting
down. I pissed into a mayonnaise jar when I
was a kid. But I’m not suggesting that all you criplets reflexively do
the same just because I did and I’m your
role model because you admire the shit out of me. Consider the sound reasoning
behind it.
The mayonnaise jar must’ve
been my mother’s idea. She had good instincts as a mother of crippled kids. She
probably calculated that a mayonnaise jar was precisely the right receptacle
for her dear son to piss into. A pickle jar
was too bulky. The opening on a pop bottle was too narrow, leaving very little
margin for error.
But my mother’s primary
motivation was probably her legendary frugality. She wasn’t cheap. She was
frugal. A cheap person does everything they can to keep from spending their
money. A frugal person tries to get the most out of their money. A good way to
accomplish this is to figure out ways to get more than one use out of things. That’s
why my mother loved shopping at resale stores.
My mother approached problem-solving
from this frugal perspective. So I imagine that one day while contemplating how
to reuse an empty mayonnaise jar, a light bulb went off in her head.
I don’t piss into mayonnaise
jars anymore, but I do retain my mother’s frugal value system. And I defend my
actions by saying that I am being an environmentalist. Like for instance, when
I get carry-out food and it comes in plastic
containers, I keep the containers for a
while and use them for storing other leftovers in my fridge, thus shortening the time these containers are cluttering up some landfill.
I’m waging war against the destructiveness of America’s disposable consumer
culture. I’m saving the earth, just like I was doing when I pissed into a
mayonnaise jar.
