No Place to Go

I know what it’s like to be homeless because I was once homeless myself. And I’m here to tell you that it was hell! I arrived at the check-in desk of the luxury hotel around noon and I told my name to the annoyingly cheery woman who scrutinized a computer screen on the other side of the desk. After a period of silent suspense, she flashed me a resolute thumbs up to assure me that everything was A-Ok with my reservation. She said that I would receive a text when my room was ready for occupancy. I said that I was ready to occupy my room right now but she reminded me that check-in time wasn’t until 2 p.m. That meant that I had two hours to kill. So I went to the hotel bar and ordered a drink. As I sipped my gin and tonic, I wondered if I could enjoy it while seething over the fact that I gave in to bureaucracy so easily. I should have argued more with that woman behind the desk! What kind of force to be reckoned with was I? When I had an opportunity to speak truth to power, I just accepted defeat and walked away. There was another person sitting at the other end of the bar. I figured that he must also be homeless. But he didn’t look the part. He wasn’t bedraggled at all. He was clean shaven and dressed in a well-pressed suit. He looked like a businessman. I wanted to go up to him and express my solidarity with him as a fellow homeless person. I wanted to encourage him to be proud of who he was and tell him that he didn’t have to try and pass as a housed person. But before I could make a move, he finished his drink and left. So I finished my drink, but that had only killed 30 minutes. I was staring in the ugly face of the dreadful reality that I would still be homeless for another 90 minutes. Not knowing where else to turn, I went to the hotel restaurant and ordered filet mignon, medium rare. But when my server brought it to me, it was well done! Oh well! I ate it anyway and at least that killed about 90 more minutes. I received a text informing me that my room was ready for occupancy. And when I finally got to my room, I immediately flopped down on my king bed and reflected on my period of homelessness. Like I said, it was hell! I mean, I believe that hell is a place where filet mignon is abundant, but the only way they serve it is well done! (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH

Words

Oh boy! It looks like the legislators are at it again! They’re trying to help out the cripples, whether we like it or not! A couple of state legislators in Massachusetts are trying to push through a bill that’s entitled “An Act amending certain laws relative to individuals with disabilities.” It strikes phrases such as “handicapped persons,” “disabled individuals,” “disabled American veterans,” and “mentally retarded” from state laws and replaces them with phrases such as “persons with disabilities,” “person with an intellectual or developmental disability.” And of course it has received unanimous support so far. And why not? To vote against something like that can get you pegged as a Cripple Scrooge. But voting for it gives you an opportunity to go around pretending that you love cripples while you quietly work against their best interests. Don’t get me wrong. I think language is important because it shows what we really think about certain people. If you call someone a retard because you mean it as an insult, that shows what you and people who find that funny really think of retards and cripples. It shows that you think of them as lesser-than and spewing propaganda like that provides the dehumanizing cover that is needed to justify mistreating or ignoring certain people. But all this reminds me of when the federal government passed a law that was called Rosa’s Law. Its purpose was to change federal law so that “references to mental retardation” were changed to ”references to an intellectual disability” and references to “a mentally retarded individual" were changed to references to “an individual with an intellectual disability.” And this law also passed unanimously and was signed by Barack Obama. Thus, the words mentally retarded were forever stricken from all federal documents. At the time, the feds gave money to states that had an ICF/MR operating within their borders. That stands for intermediate care facility for the mentally retarded. Those places were essentially nursing homes where they locked up cripples who needed a high level of assistance and took away their rights. They still exist in every state and they still get lots of money from the federal government to lock up cripples who need a high level of assistance and take away their rights. Only now, thanks to Rosa’s Law, the federal government calls them ICF/IDs. I bet if some legislator introduced a bill to defund those places and spend the money instead supporting people in real community settings, it wouldn’t pass unanimously. Banishing a word is one way of destigmatizing it. Or those who have been burned the most by the stigma can do the opposite and say it loud and proud as often as they can until it isn’t so dehumanizing anymore. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH

Exclusive Treatment

If you are both crippled and native American, it must really suck to be you sometimes. After all, when you hear the word exclusive, you probably get a double case of the willies. I mean, as a crippled person, I can report that that word gives me the willies. For most people, receiving exclusive treatment makes them feel special and proud. If you live in a gated community, that is an exclusive environment because you are surrounded by a fence that is supposed to keep the riff raff out so as to protect you from them. But nursing homes are the kind of exclusive environments cripples are used to. They’re supposed to keep the riff raff fenced in so as to protect everyone on the outside from them/us. And for most people, exclusive schools have names like Harvard and Yale. But the exclusive schools cripples ended up in had names like the Minnesota School for Feeble Minded and Colony for Epileptics. And native Americans were also shipped off to exclusive schools like that. The goal of all of these exclusive schools was to refine as many of these savages as possible so as to turn as many of them as possible into English-speaking white people. But at the exclusive cripple schools, they had no such goals for any of us. Even though some of these places call themselves developmental centers, the only thing that people who have lived in those places have developed is butt callouses All that we were expected to do was sit down and shut up. I guess the powers that were must have thought that we were all destined to be savages no matter how hard they tried to save us. So why bother? (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH