Sunday, September 29, 2024

Morally Inconsistent

 Maybe I should be out there trying to get pregnant women to drink lots of alcohol. That way there would probably be more babies born crippled. (Author’s note: There’s a condition known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, where a kid is born crippled because their mother drank alcohol during pregnancy. I don’t doubt that this condition exists, but I do wonder why I’ve never met any of these kinds of cripples. Because I thought I’d met every imaginable genre of cripple. I’ve met bleeders and autistics and spastics and CPs and MSers and two kinds of MDs, muscular dystrophy and macular degeneration. So you’d think that by now I would’ve met an FAS cripple or at least somebody who knows one. Oh well, I guess I will someday.)

Or maybe I should be one of those antivaxxers that tries to get everyone to not get vaccinated otherwise they might end up with autism or with a computer chip implanted in them so that their every move can be monitored by the government and/or Bill Gates. That way diseases like polio might make a comeback, thus creating more cripples (Author’s note: I am currently an antivaxxer, but only when I see a sign at a pharmacy trying to get me to come in and get vaccinated. I always say no thanks to that because I figure that the reason they’re making a big deal about getting vaccinated is not because I really need it  but because vaccinating people must make them a lot of money. I ask my doctor what shots I really need and I get those he tells me I should get,)

It would be stupid for me to do either of those things mentioned above, but isn’t that the way for me to be morally consistent? I mean, I go around now trying to get people to see that being a cripple is nothing to be ashamed of, that we deserve to be respected and celebrated for who we are.

That’s why I hate cure campaigns. I think they usually reinforce the message that being crippled is nothing but hell and so the best thing we all can do for the poor cripples is cure them so their lives won’t be nothing but hell anymore.

But isn’t it hypocritical of me to object so strongly to efforts to get rid of all of the cripples by curing us ali but not by trying to prevent us from becoming cripples in the first place? Shouldn’t my attitude in regards to cripples be the more the merrier?  Shouldn’t I be leaving a trail of banana peels behind me everywhere I go?

But I guess that somewhere deep down inside I must know that even if prevention campaigns are 100 percent successful, there will always be cripples among us. So its okay to be morally inconsistent.

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Saturday, September 21, 2024

Not a Cripple-Friendly Town

As I drifted around the grocery store that was far away from home, I kept getting dirty looks. But all I was doing was minding my own business and trying to pick up a few groceries. So I said to myself,” Damn, this sure is not a cripple-friendly town.”

I’m going to name names here because I think it’s important that the truth be told. The town I’m talking about is Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, which is a little bit north of Green Bay.

And people kept looking at me as if they deeply resented my very existence in their space. I’m not used to that because it seems to me like most people are able to maintain a tight poker face when they unexpectedly encounter a cripple. If they feel alarmed they are able to  pretend like they didn’t even notice you were there. But not these people. No sir. They made no secret of the fact that they didn’t want me there.

But maybe that’s a good thing because at least they’re being honest. In a lot of places, people are afraid to admit that cripples and crippledness make them feel uncomfortable so they put on a fake smile or act like they don’t see you. Thus, a lot of cripples have a hard time relaxing around unfamiliar verts  (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). These cripples are always wondering if the smiles and the body language of the verts are telling the truth.

Personally, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care if I make a vert feel uncomfortable. Life is too short to worry about that. I figure if they don’t like me being there they can leave.

In fact, I almost shouted out something like, “If you people don’t like it, you can all shove it!” But then a woman said something to me that made me feel real stupid.  She said, “Hey, what’s that! A Bears jersey!” As she walked past me, she playfully punched my shoulder and cackled out a laugh.

I forgot that I was wearing a Chicago Bears jersey in the heart of Packer country.

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Wednesday, September 11, 2024

A Fate Worse Than Being Fat

 

It seems that researchers have found that a  popular weight-loss drug may cause blindness.

 Normally, that kind of news would mean curtains for the company that manufactures the drug because it might make everybody freak out and stop buying that drug. But in this case, it might not be so bad.

Because you can be blind and still be cool. Or at least that’s how I think a lot of other people think. I mean, look at Stevie Wonder. Everybody thinks Stevie Wonder is cool. And yet everybody knows Stevie Wonder is blind.

I recently saw a jazz combo performing and one of the musicians was wearing sunglasses. It was indoors. And I couldn’t tell if the guy was wearing sunglasses because he was blind or because he was cool.

So, when someone does a cost/benefit analysis of becoming skinny but maybe becoming blind in the process, they might be more inclined to take the drug anyway and run the risk of going blind.

But if taking a popular weight-loss drug could cause somebody to be crippled like me, that would probably be a different story. It would be like those dumb shits who won’t get their kids vaccinated because they heard somewhere that vaccines cause autism. Even if that was true, these people are saying that they’d rather that their kids caught something like measles or whooping cough or the plague than maybe be autistic.

If taking the popular weight-loss drug might turn a person into a crippled old man in a motorized wheelchair like me, a lot of people probably wouldn’t take the risk anyway because they don’t think that anybody can be that kind of cripple and still be cool.

They would probably consider that to be a fate worse than being fat.

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