Be Careful What You Wish For

 

I noticed that the new coffee shop down the street must’ve recently installed a ramp on their front door. That really sucks because now that it’s accessible, I feel obligated to go there,

My wife and I have been bitching at them for having a step on their entrance and no ramp. My wife is in a wheelchair too. And then they went and put in a ramp and they didn’t make us sue them or anything.

 So now I feel like a poster child for that old saying: “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.”

It’s like my deaf friends who have told me about how they bitch about public events that don’t have sign language interpretation and/or captioning to make it accessible for people like them. And then sign language and/or captioning gets added and then they feel like they have to go because if deaf people don’t show up, the people who organize the event might stop doing sign language interpretation and/or captioning. So, they have to pick their battles. If there’s a Jehovah’s Witness church service, for example, that doesn’t have sign language interpretation and/or captioning, they might not want to bitch about it.

And so now I feel like if I don’t run over to that new coffee shop right away and give them my business, they might take the ramp away and that’ll be my fault. It’s pretty stupid for me to feel that way, don’t you think?  It just goes to show that even the cripples that  bitch the most still feel guilty about it deep down inside when we speak up for ourselves. We feel we have to make up for it somehow.

 Whatever it all means, I know for sure that if a Jehovah’s Witness temple opens up around here and it doesn’t have a ramp, I won’t say a word about it.

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I am the Proverbial Tortoise

 Whenever you see a professional sports team with a wimpy name, like the Marlins, that probably means that the name is an homage to an animal that’s indigenous to and synonymous with that area. If everybody did that, we’d have a sports team called the Chicago Pigeons. And our archrivals would be the New York Rats. (It’s true that we have plenty of rats of our own here in Chicago. But those New York rats look like they don’t mess around. If their rats took on our rats in a fight to the death, I’d put my money on the New York rats. But if their rats took on our pigeons, I’d put my money on our pigeons.)

In Chicago, sooner or later, everybody engages in pigeon chasing That’s what happens when you come across a flock of pigeons who are gathered on the ground pecking on bird seed or something. Something comes over you and you just start running full speed at the flock of pigeons because you know what will happen . The pigeons will fly away all at once and that’s really cool to experience. And the pigeons always wait until the last minute to take off. It’s like they have radar that tells them not to skedaddle until they see the whites of your eyes. Quite often, when driving the streets of Chicago, you’ll see a pigeon in the middle of the road. You’re closing in on it fast and it’s still in the middle of the road and it looks like there’s no way you’re going to be able to avoid splattering a pigeon. But at the very last instant the pigeon flies away and somehow manages to escape.

It used to be that whenever I saw a flock of pigeons bustling around on the ground, I’d drive my wheelchair right into it full blast. I still do, but when I drive full blast I’m a lot slower than I used to be. Because I’ve programmed my chair so that sometimes when I go full blast I feel like I’m dragging my ass. But I do that so won’t get jostled and discombobulated all to hell when I hit a bump. The downside is that when I charge full blast into a flock of pigeons, they just walk away. I’m moving so that they don’t even have to fly away.

I am the proverbial tortoise. But sometimes the moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race. So sometimes I get the last laugh.

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The Recognition of the Mainstream Culture

 

I must say that at first, I felt a joyous sense of historical vindication when I saw professional Cornhole being played on a national sports television network. This meant that the activity of tossing beanbags into holes for points was now being recognized as legitimate by the mainstream culture. And that meant that, by extension, cripples were also being recognized as legitimate by the mainstream culture.

Because there was a time when tossing a beanbag was something only cripples spent a lot of time doing. As a  criplet, I tossed a lot of beanbags into holes on boards, like Cornhole, or into garbage cans or whatever. I feel stupid now that I thought it was kind of fun at the time, when, in fact, it was a useless activity. It seemed destined to always be a resoundingly unmarketable skill, no matter how zealously I developed it. It was indicative of the low expectations placed on cripples.

I never dreamed that I’d see the day when tossing beanbags would be looked upon as cool enough to be covered by a national sports television network. I never dreamed that if I played my cards right, I might someday land a million-dollar beanbag endorsement deal.  I never dreamed that tossing beanbags might someday make me a chick magnet.

But then I noticed that none of the people playing Cornhole on television were crippled.  So I wondered if this was really just a matter of cultural appropriation. Because there’s a thin line between cultural appropriation and being recognized as legitimate by mainstream culture. Cultural appropriation is when the mainstream culture steals something that someone else created and pretends that they are the ones who thought it up. Why do we need the recognition of mainstream culture to feel validated? It’s like busting your ass day in and day out trying to win your father’s approval. It’s such a relief when you finally give up trying to do that and say to yourself, “Screw it. I’m cool whether he says so or not.”

That’s when my joyous sense of historical vindication went away. So now I’m thinking, “Fuck you, mainstream culture! Who needs you?

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