The Terms and Conditions of my Acceptance

 

It happens to every cripple sooner or later. You’re sitting on a street corner minding your own business when suddenly some walking person tosses a few dollars in your lap and says something like, “God bless you.”

I used to get all huffy and indignant whenever that happened to me. I always felt it was important to say something to the person like, “Just because I’m a cripple doesn’t make me a goddam beggar!”

But now my perspective has changed somewhat. I’m willing to except the bucks that are tossed my way, but I still feel it’s important to let the tosser know why I’m accepting it.

But rather than give a long speech, what I ought to do is carry around several copies of a document entitled THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF MY ACCEPTANCE. Here’s the first draft that I’ve put together in my head:

To whom it may concern,

I am accepting the money you just gave me because one of the hardest things about being crippled is that it’s so goddam expensive. We have to buy a lot of ridiculously pricey stuff most people don’t have to buy, such as wheelchairs and catheters. We may have to pay somebody just to help us drag our sorry asses out of bed every morning.

So I would be remiss in my fiscal responsibility to myself if I turned down any offer of financial support, as paltry as it may be.

But let me also be clear that I do not consider it to be your responsibility to eliminate the aforementioned inequities that come with being crippled. The permanent solution is socialist revolution. I’m not talking about the kind of bull shit socialism where some asshole like Stalin is in charge. I’m talking about creating the kind of socialist society where if someone needs a wheelchair or catheters or assistance dragging their sorry ass out of bed every morning, they can get what they need without delay or hassle and without going broke.

If you really want to help cripples like me, you should join the fight to bring about such a revolution. Meanwhile, we cripples still have catheters and wheelchairs to buy. And if our wheelchairs break and we have to get them repaired, paying for that will make Bill Fucking Gates go broke!

So I will grudgingly accept your contribution and I'll try not to feel too demeaned. And no, I can’t give you a receipt so you can write this off your taxes.

Sincerely yours,

Smart Ass Cripple

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Good News and Bad News

 

Those personal injury attorneys are sort of like Make-a-wish for adults.

They’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that they can make you a millionaire beyond your wildest dreams. The bad news is that in order to qualify for that, you have to have been in a terrible accident.

Make-a wish works the same way. They can arrange for a kid to spend an afternoon hanging out with Beyonce. But in order to qualify for that, that kid has to have cancer or something similarly terrible. Healthy kids need not apply.

And some kids with cancer need not apply either. If you’re a kid with cancer that still somehow manages to have a can-do attitude and an upbeat spirit, you’ll probably make the cut because you’ll make Beyoncé feel inspired with your attitude. But if you’re all bummed out and depressed about having cancer, you probably won’t make the cut because you might make Beyonce feel bummed out and depressed, too. And that would ruin everything.

When I see stories on the television about Make-a-Wish kids running around with their favorite pop culture heroes, I wonder how that kid’s siblings feel about it all as they watch from the background. On the one hand, the siblings probably have to feel at least a little bit jealous that no one’s gushing all over them. But on the other hand, they probably have to feel at least a little bit relieved when they realize that the reason no one’s paying attention to them is because they don’t have cancer.

Because that’s how I feel when I see commercials for those personal injury attorneys. On the one hand, I think about how cool it would be to be a millionaire beyond my wildest dreams. But on the other hand, when I think about what needs to happen in order to make that happen, I don’t feel like running out and getting hit by a bus.

I say to myself, “That’s all right. I’m good.”

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Who the Hell are These Cripples, Anyway?

 

There are times when I just shake my head and say to myself. “Who the hell are these cripples, anyway?”

I especially feel that way when I read cripple magazines. There are people who put out magazines where cripples are the target audience. The ads are for cripple stuff like wheelchairs and catheters. These magazines tend to be glossy and full of stories about adventurous cripples who do stuff like go on safaris. There are never stories about cripples living off Social Security and hustling hard to get by, trying to figure out how the hell they’re going to be able to afford to buy cripple stuff like wheelchairs and catheters.

And it’s inevitable that sooner or later the magazines will run a story about a cripple who couldn’t find a wheelchair accessible place to live so they built a wheelchair accessible house from scratch. The story recounts the whole process, from the cripple finding and acquiring just the right plot of land to drawing up blueprints with the architects to supervising the contractor during construction.

And that’s when I say to myself, “Who the hell are these cripples, anyway?” I mean, finding a wheelchair accessible place to live is a trying quest that every cripple must eventually embark upon. But of the zillions of cripples I’ve known, I don’t believe I’ve met one who conquered this obstacle by building their own wheelchair accessible house.

Who can afford to do that? Cripples in search of a wheelchair accessible place to live usually settle for moving into some tiny hole that’s vaguely accessible and then they try to stay there for the rest of their lives because finding an affordable place to live is a huge pain in the ass when you don’t have to worry about wheelchair access. But when you do have to worry about wheelchair access, that eliminates about 90 percent of the available tiny holes from consideration.

At lot of cripples move into places that are accidentally accessible. Like maybe there’s a building with a tiny hole of a “garden” apartment back by the dumpster area in the alley. And the entrance is flat not for the benefit of cripples but so that the dumpsters can be rolled in and out. So the cripple enters and exits through the dumpster gate. The view from their windows is of the alley.

But that’s good enough! To the cripple it’s paradise. The cripple will stay there for the rest of their life if they can  because it sure beats the hell out of searching for a wheelchair accessible place to live.

I never see stories like that in those cripple magazines.

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My Cold Feet Won't Kill Me

 

The television commercial was designed to make me immediately want to run out and get a neuropathy risk assessment. But it didn’t work on me.

I must admit that at first the commercial caught my ear. The all-knowing voiceover explained that neuropathy is nerve damage and then it rattled off symptoms. “Do you suffer from numbness or tingling in your fingers and or toes?” it said. “Do you have cold feet?”

Cold feet? I always have cold feet. If the temperature is below 80 degrees, I get cold feet. I even get cold feet if the temperature is above 80 degrees if there’s too much air conditioning, like in a hotel. When its hot outside, hotels crank up the air conditioning and it feels like you’re in a meat locker.

So maybe this means I have neuropathy. And maybe my cold feet might kill so maybe I shouldn’t be so cavalier about them! Maybe I should get a neuropathy risk assessment right away, as the all-knowing voiceover urged me to do.

But I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it even though the all-knowing voiceover warned of all the scary things that can happen if neuropathy goes untreated. A person can end up in a wheelchair!

That didn’t scare me.

Untreated neuropathy can even lead to amputation!

That didn’t scare me either. When I was a kid, I got some sort of bad infection in my foot. As I was sitting with my foot hanging over the bathtub so my mother could scrub it, she said to me, “You better be careful, or you might have to have your foot cut off!”

And I said, “So what. I don’t use it anyway.”

That’s how I felt about it, even as a kid. About half of my body didn’t work anyway. I just dragged it around for cosmetic purposes. It might be a relief not to have to do that anymore. So maybe the cure for perpetually cold feet is not to have any feet.

The all-knowing voiceover never said untreated neuropathy can be lethal. So it couldn’t scare me. I guess I wasn’t the right demographic.

But seeing that commercial did bring me a certain peace of mind. At least I now know that my cold feet won’t kill me.

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Getting Good and Blasted on a Cripple Field Trip

 

The sessions of Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Summer Camp were one week long. The YMCA campgrounds where the sessions were held wasn’t far away from a shopping mall.

So one year the people who organized the cripple activities at the camp decided to arrange a Wednesday field trip to the shopping mall. At first only the crippled older women went. The guys my age were too cool to go on a crippled old lady’s field trip like that.

But by the second or third year we all signed up to go. In fact, just about the whole camp emptied out as everyone boarded one of the cripple buses and went to the shopping mall. That’s because word got around that there was a bar in the shopping mall called Beer & Brat. And so everyone except the crippled old ladies who enjoyed going to the stores went straight to Beer & Brat and spent the afternoon getting good and blasted. Apparently Beer & Brat didn’t card us very hard because I don’t think a lot of us were quite old enough to get good and blasted legally.

At Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Summer Camp, every cripple had to be accompanied at all times by our specially assigned vert (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). And so many of the verts that were with us also got good and blasted. I remember one of them climbing on top of the juke box and mooning everybody.

I wonder what the owners of Beer & Brat made of the annual cripple invasion. They were probably at least a little freaked out because getting a bunch of cripples good and blasted surely had to be against the law or something, right? But they should’ve been happy as hell to see us packing the place because no doubt they made a shitload of money off of us. And on a Wednesday to boot!

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Relieving my Pain and Suffering

 

 

I received an unexpected check in the mail from the U.S. government. I wasn’t sure what it was for. At first I figured maybe  it was a tax refund. But in the memo it said “reparations for being crippled. “

I don’t recall demanding that the government pay me reparations for being crippled. And I don’t recall anyone else ever demanding that either.  But sometimes the government does nice things out of the blue just for the hell of it. That’s how we got the Americans with Disabilities Act. Congress just woke up one morning feeling particularly chipper and it said to itself, “I think I’ll surprise the cripples by giving them this law, just to remind them how much we love them. They really deserve it.   I can’t wait to see the look of delight on their sad little faces!” I figure if the government wants to give me free money, who the hell am I to say no? So I cashed the check. I considered it to be my patriotic duty.

There was a letter included in the envelope with the check. It said, “Dear Mike, This is the U.S. Government writing to say we’re sorry you’re crippled. Please accept the enclosed check as a token of our condolences. Consider this our way of trying to help you relieve your pain and suffering.”

So I took all the cash and flew to Vegas. And besides what I spent on stuff like airfare and hotel, I blew all the rest of my reparations  on snorting lines of cocaine off the bare bellies of exotic dancers. Why not? After all, the purpose of the money was to relieve the pain and suffering I’ve endured because I’m crippled.

And now I’m back home and back to being broke ass. I think the whole thing was an experiment. Sometimes governments use cripples as guinea pigs. The Nazis had a campaign of trying to exterminate cripples so they could be more efficient when it became time to try to exterminate the Jews.

Maybe the government started out by sending cripples reparations just to see what would happen. Because a lot of people say that if the government gives cash directly to poor people they’ll just take it and blow it all.

So maybe, based on what I did, the next time the government pays some other group of people reparations, in order to keep them was squandering it frivolously, they’ll send them a gift card from Home Depot or something.

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Destined to be a Non-conformist

 

If you’re going to find happiness and contentment as a cripple, it helps to be the kind of person who likes being a non-conformist (and I don't mean in the religious sense). 

You don’t really have a choice in the matter. Sooner or later, your body and/or brain are going to defy your commands and do whatever they damn well please whether you like it or not. That’s how crippled bodies are. Eventually you’re going to walk funny or talk funny or throw a big seizure at the most inopportune time.

Your body is never going to completely conform to the norm no matter how hard you try. So you might as well embrace being a non-conformist. I know that there are a lot of fake non-conformists in the world. They conform to the standards that are necessary to qualify for membership in  whatever pack of non-conformists with whom they are conforming today.

But a lot of cripples are natural born non-conformists. It’s easier to come to grips with that reality if you’re a cripple who has no chance of passing as a vert (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). I haven’t walked since I was 17 years old. And even before then the best I could maybe do was walk a little around a room if it was a small room and I was holding onto the walls.

So whenever I went out in public, I didn’t even think about trying to tell my body to walk like a vert because I knew it wouldn’t listen to me. It was going to play by its own rules.

I was destined to make a mockery out of a lot of things just by being myself. To be ashamed of that was to be ashamed of myself. So the only way I was ever going to learn to love my crippled self was to love being a non-conformist. Because that’s what I am.

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