Dignity

The protagonist in the television commercial was a man who appeared to be a senior citizen.He stood in a bathroom and forlornly told the audience about how asking his adult son to help him bathe was the hardest thing he ever had to do. But never fear, he said, because he had one of those walk-in bathtubs installed. So now he can continue bathing himself and thus he has his dignity back. I just shook my head and laughed when I heard that and I was glad that I’ve been crippled for too long to internalize that kind of stuff. Otherwise, I might actually start to believe that shit like that could be true and therefore I will forever be without dignity because I cannot (and never will be able to) bathe myself. I guess it never occurred to me that being crippled automatically makes me undignified. I can’t help it. That’s how I was raised. If I’m undignified, it’s for a lot more reasons than that. There are a lot of definitions of the word dignity flying around out there. I stopped looking after I looked up the word seven times because none of the definitions that I found came anywhere close to equating dignity with the ability to bathe yourself. So I guess that I will continue to shake my head and laugh whenever I am assaulted by that commercial, knowing that it’s all a bunch of b.s. that’s designed to sell walk-in bathtubs. Except that on some level it’s not so funny. Some cripples might see that commercial and actually come to believe that dignity can be purchased for the price of a walk-in bathtub (plus installation). And whomever convinced them that that’s how it works can expect to be forgiven in the name of capitalism. Because the most sacred right that we all have is the right to try to make a living, no matter who gets hurt. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH

The Cripple Olympics

As soon as the regular Olympics end, the cripple Olympics begin. Thus, Smart Ass Cripple has been embedded for the last several months with some crippled Olympians who are fervently hoping to bring home gold medals to the U.S.A. Like for instance, there’s Kelly from Ohio, the paraplegic figure skater. She puts ice skates on her feet, puts both her feet back on the foot pedals of her wheelchair and then pushes her wheelchair around all over the rink. Her dazzling moves really wow the spectators, like when she pops wheelies and spins her wheelchair in circles. And when she skates with her partner, Josh, he sits on her lap while she pops wheelies and spins her wheelchair in circles. And then there’s Mark of New Hampshire, the quadriplegic ski jumper. He became a quad when he wiped out ski jumping. But that didn’t stop him from getting right back up on the proverbial horse. These days, one of the uncrippled guys from his entourage pushes Mark out of the chute and he barrels downhill, rapidly gaining speed, until he reaches the cliff. And then he floats through the air in his wheelchair hoping to land on all four wheels. And last but certainly not least there’s Adam from Iowa, the polio pole vaulter. When he was a child, he watched the Olympics on television from his iron lung and dreamed that he would some day be a famous pole vaulter. But polio didn’t stop him from pursuing that dream. Mark, however, is taking a litigious path to Olympic gold. He wants to be in the regular Olympics so he is taking the U.S. Olympic Committee to court in the hopes of getting a judge to declare that excluding people in iron lungs from taking part in the regular Olympics pole vaulting competition violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Fortunately, pole vaulting is a summer sport so he has time to work on it. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH

Sentience

Sometimes I find myself pondering a deep philosophical question: are my dogs sentient beings? It all depends on which definition of sentience you go by. The Internet, which is never wrong, defines sentience as, “capacity for sensation or feeling.” In that case, my dogs are quite sentient indeed. I know that they feel sorrow because they demonstrate it quite clearly whenever my wife leaves the house. They sit there staring at the front door and whimpering, even if she’s just going down the hall to the garbage chute. They seem to be convinced that she’s never going to return. And when she does they dance for joy. But when I apply my own definition of sentience to my dogs, it’s not so clear. Because to me, sentience means self awareness. And I think that you become self aware when you fully grasp the concept of farting. It’s that moment of true enlightenment that occurs when you realize that all God’s children fart. And because it stinks and sounds like a tuba blast it must be God’s way of providing us all with some fool-proof comic relief from the relentless stress of being alive. When you stop taking farts seriously, you feel like a great weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. Oh sure, my dogs fart a lot. Dogs fart, too. And I believe that God invented dogs so that humans would have another species on which to blame our own farts when we are too embarrassed to admit that we cut one loose. But when my dogs fart, they do so with great non-chalance. They just rip one and continue on about their business. So that means that either my dogs have an innate sentience or they don’t have a clue. Either they figured out a long time ago that farting is nothing to get all worked up about or they haven’t fully considered the concept of farting. I believe it’s the latter because dogs don’t make fart jokes and anyone who has fully considered the concept of farting would come to the conclusion pretty quickly that it is a joking matter. The ability to make fart jokes is the true mark of a sentient being. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH

An Unruly Acronym

Another reason why I don’t like to put my time and sweat into cripple campaigns that are diagnosis specific is that I fear that, sooner or later, it would make for an unruly acronym. I mean that’s what seems to be happening with LGBTQ. It seems like every time I look up, another letter has been added. I’m sure that that’s all in an effort to make sure that everyone knows that LGBTQ is a big tent that includes a lot of people. If I was LGBT or Q, I’d like to think that I would be just fine with all this fluidity. But I don’t know how I'd feel about it if cripples tried to do the same thing. Some people are really possessive of their cripple status. They fight back hard whenever anybody else attempts to declare or redefine their crippledness, as if there is only so much crippledness to go around and letting more people join the club means that they will necessarily be left with less. But I tend to think the more the merrier. I’m no math whiz but I can add. And it seems to me that the more people that you have with you the stronger you are, at least in the political sense. Make no mistake, cripples have plenty of acronyms. Like for example, you could say that I am an MD, which means that I have muscular dystrophy. But I have another friend who is also an MD but his MD is macular degeneration, which means that he is losing his eyesight. So even though we are both MDs, we are nothing like each other in terms of the physical manifestation of our crippledness. And then there are all of those people with cerebral palsy (CP) and everybody with multiple sclerosis (MS). So any acronym for cripples that would include all of us would have to have all of those letters in it, plus a whole lot more. That’s why I think I’ll keep it simple and stick with cripple. (Please support Smart Ass Cripple and help us keep going. Just click below to contribute.) https://www.paypal.me/smartasscripple?fbclid=IwAR2qrql-UFH19OepgeaCG4WmblyNylb27k2q8eYxXHH