The Fun Enforcers

The woman ran up to me and said , “ Are you enjoying the park?" I said yes so she said, “Well , that’s good. And you know , we have a beach wheelchair for you!” I wanted to let her down gently. I figured that this must be one of those state parks I’ve been hearing about where they’ve purchased a bunch of equipment that’s supposed to make natural terrain a lot more cripple accessible.. And when this woman saw me she got all excited because she probably thought that since I am an actual card-carrying cripple, I’d be dyig to use the beach chair. But I wasn’t. It is true that beaches are probably the most foreboding of environments for wheelchair cripples like me because beaches are full of sand and wheels sink into sand real quick and then you’re stuck. However a beach chair looks like a glorified lawn chair with four big wheels on it that are supposed to be able to zip right through the sand, thus enabling wheelchair cripples to frolic on the beach like normal people do. But the beach chair doesn’t look very comfy. It looks like if I sat in it my ass would start hurting in about ten minutes. I don’t want to frolic that bad. I was also afraid that if I turned her down too emphatically, the situation would soon deteriorate into one of those pissing matches like I used to get into at Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp. Everybody in charge there was a vert (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). And they seemed to think that their job was to make sure that the cripples were having a good time, whether we liked it or not! They were the fun enforcers. They seemed to think that the more we said that we didn’t want to do something, the more we really wanted to do it. Take, for example, horseback riding. I hated horseback riding. I couldn’t hold my balance very well on the back of a jerky horse. I was terrified that I would fall off and crack my skull. That wasn't my idea of fun. So inevitably, one of the fun enforcers would come along and crouch down to my eye level and try to convince me that I’d discover what a load of fun horseback riding was if I would just give it a try. I felt ambushed. I heard stories of crippled kids being dragged kicking and screaming to the horse stables or to arts and crafts or whatever. That’s why I feared that if I was too firm in telling this vert woman at the state park no that she might chloroform me and I’d wake up down on the beach in the beach chair with my ass hurting. That wasn’t my idea of fun. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH-

Living on Borrowed Time

I know that I’m living on borrowed time. And I have my mother to thank for that . Because when I was but a wee criplet, my mother took me to see a lot of doctors That’s what the parents of criplets were told that they were supposed to do about us back then by the people who were considered to be the experts. They were other doctors and therapists and people who worked for behemoth charities for criplets and such. And they were all verts (which is what I call people who aren’t crippled, because it’s short for vertical). At first I wondered if these experts thought that if they sent criplets like me to enough doctors, maybe sooner or later we would come across one who had a magic potion or something that would cure us. But I came to think that they really didn’t know what the hell to do about a criplet like me and so when they told our parents that they should take us to see a lot of doctors, they were probably punting. I think that my mother never felt quite comfortable following through with all of the surgeries and braces all of the things that the doctors told her I had to get. Because she usually left the decision about whether or not to follow the advice of the doctors up to me and I almost always said no. I guess I was right about that, considering that I will be 70 and none of those doctors would’ve predicted that I would still be around, even if I did everything they said. But I really felt like I am living on borrowed time when I watched a documentary about cripples. There was a Canadian cripple in it and judging by how his body looked, l figured he was the same genre of cripple that I am . He also relies on a crew of people to come into his home to help him do all of the things he needs help doing, like getting out of bed and getting dressed. But he was having a lot more trouble managing and maintaining his crew than I do. The Canadian cripple said that his caregiver was his mother, until she recently died. I remembered when I was a teenager and my mother said to me, “ I love you but when you’re 18, please get out of my house.” So when I went off to college a few years later, far away from home, i hired my first crew member and I’ve had to hire about a hundred more since then. And by the time my mom died about 20 years later, I had long since fulfilled her dream and gotten out of her house. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH-nvFX30Mk2fJx9uI