No Kong Shins on the Southwest Side

A friend introduced me to her friend Jill. Jill was a tall and strapping lass with a five o’clock shadow.

Jill wore a dark gray women’s business suit, like an assistant principal. Her ruffled blouse was of the style my mother wore.

Jill’s voice was a man’s voice. Baritone. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Jill asked me. I decided not to even pretend I did. She said a few years back I interviewed her for a position as one of my pit crew.

Funny how I didn’t remember her at all. I wanted to ask Jill if she was Jack at that time. Because surely I would remember her as Jill. And I would have been strongly inclined to hire her. Because I’m partial toward hiring the kind of people that I never would have met on the southwest side of Chicago. I feel like those who’d shake them up on the southwest side are of my tribe. I meet someone like her and I place myself in the living room of my boyhood home in the 1960s and ‘70s, looking out the window. Would anyone like Jill walk by? Hell no! And if she did walk by, somebody would have called the cops! Because the southwest side was fiercely homogenous. Only sturdy, common-sense people lived there in sturdy, common-sense houses. They were people that could be trusted, like firemen and cops and butchers and upholsterers. They were all Christians and carnivores. The southwest side was like an elephant’s tusk—pure white through and through.

Cripples were even too skewed to fit in completely on the southwest side, or on any side of town for that matter. We couldn’t go to the school around the corner like everyone else. So they bused us out to one of the cripple schools, where white kids like me were only about 20 percent of the student body. My sister came home from her first day of cripple school kindergarten stunned and perplexed. “I saw a chocolate girl!” she declared.

So in that one regard, my segregated education was accidentally liberating. It forced me to mingle with the chaff. It unintentionally taught me to feel solidarity with the skewed.

I do remember when a guy named Kong Shin answered one of my pit crew ads. He showed up for the interview wearing a somber, gray robe. His hair was cut sort of Hare Krishna style. But other than that he looked and sounded like your basic white guy American in his mid 20s.

His real name was Bob, he said, and until recently he was in the advertising business. It was vicious and cutthroat and he was in up to his chin, he said. So he chucked it all and joined a Buddhist monastery. Chicago is peppered with such “monasteries,” which are basically like just three-flats mixed in discreetly with all the other three flats on the block.

I never saw anyone like Kong Shin on the southwest side either. Somebody would have called the cops on him, too. He might have gotten beat up.

Kong Shin said he needed a part time job that wouldn’t cause him any moral conflict. I really wanted to hire him. But apparently his monastery was of the hard ass, Buddhist boot camp variety. There was a strict 10 p.m. curfew. So screw that. In order for him to get back to the monastery in time to avoid turning into a pumpkin, I’d have to live my life on central standard nursing home time, going to bed before sundown.

He said he changed his name to Kong Shin because it means “empty mind.”

“That’s a compliment, right?” said I.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the highest state of consciousness.”

“A lot of people accuse me of having an empty mind,” I said. “But I don’t think they mean it as a compliment. “

Kong Shin didn’t laugh.

Smart Ass Cripple’s Strict Dress Code for His Pit Crew

Sometimes I place an ad when I need to hire a new person for my pit crew. My pit crew is the group of people that pull my pants on me in the morning, wash my armpits, change my light bulbs, haul my ass around, etc. When some people answer the ad, they are quick to proclaim that they are a CNA (certified nursing assistant). And in response, I’m quick to proclaim, “I’ll try not to hold it against you.”

And then I tell them that I have a strict dress code for my pit crew. I’m like Puff Daddy. I have a certain image to uphold and I expect my posse to dress accordingly. So they can wear anything they want except a damn nurse’s uniform.

And when I say they can wear anything, I do mean anything. I had a pit crew member who often wore skirts that he made himself. He was neither gay nor a cross-dresser. That was just how he felt like dressing some days. He also wore colorful tights so he looked like a character out of Robin Hood.

All that was cool with me. Just so he didn’t look like a nurse. I know nurse’s uniforms aren’t what they used to be. They aren’t pure angel white and they no longer wear those funny origami hats. Today they wear surgical scrubs, sometimes decorated with teddy bears or smiley faces or Smurfs. But that’s even worse. I don’t want my posse wearing Smurfs!

I hate to be so rigid but it’s necessary. Because there’s no stopping some people. Back when I lived in government-subsidized housing for cripples, one of the cripples who lived upstairs hired this woman named Toni to wash her floors and dust and do laundry. And Toni shows up for work with a stethoscope hanging from her neck.

My Aunt Gerry complained to me the other day over lunch about her pit crew. Aunt Gerry's pit crew is sent to her by a home health agency so not only do they wear Smurfy scrubs but they’re also obsessed with taking her vitals. A woman comes over just to help her take a shower and the first thing the woman does is take her vitals and write them down. It’s irritating as hell. I mean, how would you like it if every time somebody came to your home they immediately took your vitals? You order a pizza but before the delivery guy hands it over he whips out a thermometer and blood pressure cuff.

Aunt Gerry is hesitant to refuse to give up her vitals because she’s afraid the agency will consequently refuse to serve her. But hell, it seems to me her right to sit on her vitals if she feels like it is protected by the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Aunt Gerry ought to be able on any given day to say she’s securing her person and if anyone wants to search her and seize her vitals they’ll need a damn warrant.

This is why I’m such a hard ass about my dress code. Otherwise, look how easily things get out of hand.

Would Stephen Hawking Ride a Stupid Mule?

So I’m about seven years old. I’m at cripple summer camp and I’m riding a mule. My balance is perilous. I didn’t want to do this. Riding a mule is a whole lot shakier than riding a wheelchair. So a spotter walks along beside me just in case I teeter. Another adult leads the mule. We head down the shady, rutted path. It’s a fine summer day. But you know how mules are. We get about 20 yards down the path and it goes on strike. It decides we’re going neither forward nor back. It won’t budge.

And there’s my empty wheelchair 20 yards back. But neither adult can leave me to go fetch it because what if the mule decides to move with me still in the saddle? And besides, the rutted path is foreboding terrain for a wheelchair. The spotter shoves the mule’s ass like she’s pushing a car stuck in the mud. Nothing. So there I am, a criplet marooned on the back of a stationary mule. My ass is getting sore. Why the hell did I ever let the adults talk me into this?

Cripple summer camp moved on to bigger and better sites in future years where there were horses instead of mules. So my equestriphobia, deepened by my mule trauma, increased exponentially.

And there was also the apocryphal cripple summer camp legend of the horse and the hornet. As the story went, the adults finally convinced this one stubborn crippled kid to go for a horseback ride. And this kid was way more crippled than me. He couldn’t sit up in his wheelchair without being strapped in. He was floppy like a ragdoll. So of course he had a fear of riding horses. For kids like us, sitting on a moving horse is like sitting on a one-legged stool in an earthquake. Hell, even just mounting a horse can leave you with PTSD. It takes practically the whole damn 5th Battalion to hoist you up onto the saddle, one team of guys passing you up to the next team of guys like the bucket brigade. But some adult probably convinced the poor defenseless cripple not to worry because the biggest, strongest guy in all of camp, an ex-marine, would ride up there with him and hold him tight. What could possibly go wrong? But just as they embarked on their stroll, a hornet stung the horse right square in the ass. The horse shrieked and bucked and launched the cripple and the ex-marine into orbit. I heard various endings to the legend: 1) they landed in a ditch with broken collarbones 2) they landed in a tree 3) etc.

But either way, the story is probably more or less true, at least up to the hornet part. Because at cripple summer camp, whatever activity terrified you the most (be it horse riding or swimming or playing checkers), that was the activity adults felt most compelled to pressure you to do. I don’t know why. Maybe they wanted to teach us to overcome our fears, no matter how rational. They were determined we were going to have the fun time of our lives whether we liked it or not. So I could always count on a steady barrage of good cop bad cop from adults trying to convince me to ride a horse. “Don’t worry buddy, Johnny here is an ex-marine!”

And I was powerless to resist for long. The heat of the slow and steady grilling was eventually too intense. I’d surrender, take my terrifying horse ride, and get it over with.

But today’s criplets have role models to give them strength of conviction. They can ask themselves, “Would Stephen Hawking ride a stupid mule?” And the answer is laughably clear: Hell no! He’d fire up his talking box and tell them all to fuck off!

This gives modern criplets the validation it takes to have the confidence to tell everyone to fuck off, too. Today’s lucky criplets don’t have to be afraid to be afraid.

Backlash

I wish I was the kind of guy who could just sit back and enjoy his sweet parking space. I mean, look at it. Ain’t she a beaut? She’s extra wide, clearly demarcated with bright yellow lines. The diagonal stripes warn the noncrippled to trespass at their own risk. It’s even got a sign with my picture on it. That chalk-white stick cripple in the stick wheelchair looks just like me, except he’s much skinnier and has a smaller head.

I’m a privileged character. I’ve got more parking privileges than his Royal Douchebag Highness Trump. He has reserved parking spaces all over the world. But in this McDonald’s parking lot, I don’t see any signs with his picture. He has to scramble for one of the every-man-for himself spaces like every other workaday schlump.

I count my blessings. I know my parking space is a monument to tolerance. I am crippled yet I am tolerated.

But whenever I park, I feel guilty. My sense of injustice is stirred. I can’t help but think of my misunderstood brethren on other points of the cripple spectrum who are not as tolerated as I am. Take, for example, those with irritable bowel syndrome. When it comes to the need to be parked as close as possible to the entrance of a building, they can make a far more compelling case than I. But will this alone qualify them to receive a license plate with the stick cripple on it that grants them that status? Not necessarily.

But even if it does, they will still be the object of resentment. When Joe or Josephine Pedestrian witnesses the driver of a car with special cripple plates park in a special cripple parking space and then sprint from the car into the Mc Donald’s, that’s when the backlash begins. If that person’s crippled, then who isn’t? Where does it end? Give those cripples an inch and they’ll take a mile!

It’s like how my mother felt about signs in Spanish in public places like city buses. There are tons of Polish people in Chicago, she said. Why no signs for them? Why not the Lithuanians? If you put a sign up for everyone who speaks a different language in Chicago, the bus will be 13 miles long!

So it goes with the Pedestrians. Even if you explain to them the finer points of IBS and the urgent need for reserved parking it potentially poses, that’s not likely to help. What’s next, they’ll think? Will we have to have special parking spaces for those people too? And oh God, what will the picture on those signs look like? What other kinds of cripples will then demand parking supremacy? Pretty soon the parking lot will be 13 miles long!

So the mundane act of parking throws me into moral turmoil. For as much as I feel deep solidarity with cripples who don’t wear their crippledness on their sleeve like me and thus still have to prove themselves worthy of toleration, I fear speaking up for them. I don’t want to fuel the backlash. I don’t want the exasperated masses to mourn the demise of the well-defined days when everyone knew exactly whom the cripples were. Cripples looked like the guy on the sign. But today, anybody who’s missing a big toe can claim they’ve got a right to prime parking, they might think. So maybe we’ll just take the privileged parking away from them all! That’ll teach them!

I wouldn’t want that to happen. So I don’t challenge the status quo. We wheelchair cripples were the first to penetrate the parking frontier. We stuck our flag in it, the blue flag with the white stick cripple. We claimed it for ourselves. If we open it up to all the less obvious cripples, we run the risk of that being too much of a mindfuck and we’ll all end up with nothing. Only so much can be tolerated.

Lazy Cripple Sits on Ass for Entire Graduation

Ah springtime. A round, smiley-faced sun embedded in a wreath of rays beams high in the sky. Birds twerpy-twerp-twerp in the trees. All is fresh and new.

God how I dread this time of year. Because, in keeping with the cruel irony of life, along with the warmth and wonder of spring comes the inevitable, ruthless outbreak of news stories about graduating cripples who rise from their wheelchairs and walk across the stage to receive their diplomas.

Standing ovation!

I don’t get it. Where’s the shame in rolling up to get your diploma? I can’t escape the month of May without being mugged by these stories. I keep hoping every new spring will finally be the spring where this narrative reaches the cliché saturation point and thus becomes no longer newsworthy. But in fact, the walking crippled graduate stories are popping up more and more. I don’t get that either. Maybe it’s another of the bizarre consequences of global warming. What else could it be?

But then again if the rising cripple phenomenon become so commonplace that journalists yawn, might there be an equal and opposite reaction? Might the converse become newsworthy? When graduating cripples don’t feel compelled to prove whatever the hell those other cripples are trying to prove when they lurch across the stage, I wonder if there will then be headlines like LAZY CRIPPLE SITS ON ASS FOR ENTIRE GRADUATION. And when that happens, how will graduation audiences react when cheated of their chance to give a standing ovation? Will they boo and throw tomatoes at said cripple?

That’s the problem. When a cripple takes a notion to get up and walk at graduation, they’ve got nothing to lose. If they make it they’re a hero. But if they fall on their ass they’re still a hero for trying. Either way they get a prize. It’s like the damn Special Olympics.

But what if there was some risk involved? Suppose if they fell they were booed and pelted with tomatoes. That might make them think twice about trying to pull that walking stunt. It’s only fair. Cripples should be treated like everyone else. Success brings rewards and failure brings consequences.

Maybe this would put a stop to this nonsense once and for all! Because if it doesn’t stop, it’s clear what will happen to a graduating cripple who won’t even try to walk. The principal will dangle a diploma tantalizingly above their head, just high enough to where they have to stand to reach it.

May is the longest month of the year. I swear it’s 427 days long. And when it finally finally finally passes, then comes June, which is also 427 days long. Because June is wedding season and with it comes the ruthless outbreak of news stories about crippled brides or grooms who rise from their wheelchairs and walk down the aisle.

Again, I prescribe the same antidote. Arm all wedding guests with tomatoes. And if the bride or groom doesn’t make it to the altar they pay the price. Because if it this doesn’t stop, when a crippled bride or groom won’t even try to walk down the aisle, the minister will dangle the wedding ring tantalizingly above their head, and you know the rest.

Lazy Cripple Sits on Ass for Entire Graduation

Ah springtime. A round, smiley-faced sun embedded in a wreath of rays beams high in the sky. Birds twerpy-twerp-twerp in the trees. All is fresh and new.

God how I dread this time of year. Because, in keeping with the cruel irony of life, along with the warmth and wonder of spring comes the inevitable, ruthless outbreak of news stories about graduating cripples who rise from their wheelchairs and walk across the stage to receive their diplomas.

Standing ovation!

I don’t get it. Where’s the shame in rolling up to get your diploma? I can’t escape the month of May without being mugged by these stories. I keep hoping every new spring will finally be the spring where this narrative reaches the cliché saturation point and thus becomes no longer newsworthy. But in fact, the walking crippled graduate stories are popping up more and more. I don’t get that either. Maybe it’s another of the bizarre consequences of global warming. What else could it be?

But then again if the rising cripple phenomenon become so commonplace that journalists yawn, might there will be an equal and opposite reaction? Might the converse become newsworthy? When graduating cripples don’t feel compelled to prove whatever the hell those other cripples are trying to prove when they lurch across the stage, I wonder if there will then be headlines like LAZY CRIPPLE SITS ON ASS FOR ENTIRE GRADUATION. And when that happens, how will graduation audiences react when cheated of their chance to give a standing ovation? Will they boo and throw tomatoes at said cripple?

That’s the problem. When a cripple takes a notion to get up and walk at graduation, they’ve got nothing to lose. If they make it they’re a hero. But if they fall on their ass they’re still a hero for trying. Either way they get a prize. It’s like the damn Special Olympics.

But what if there was some risk involved? Suppose if they fell they were booed and pelted with tomatoes. That might make them think twice about trying to pull that walking stunt. It’s only fair. Cripples should be treated like everyone else. Success brings rewards and failure brings consequences.

Maybe this would put a stop to this nonsense once and for all! Because if it doesn’t stop, it’s clear what will happen to a graduating cripple who won’t even try to walk. The principle will dangle a diploma tantalizingly above their head, just high enough to where they have to stand to reach it.

May is the longest month of the year. I swear it’s 427 days long. And when it finally finally finally passes, then comes June, which is also 427 days long. Because June is wedding season and with it comes the ruthless outbreak of news stories about crippled brides or grooms who rise from their wheelchairs and walk down the aisle.

Again, I prescribe the same antidote. Arm all wedding guests with tomatoes. And if the bride or groom doesn’t make it to the altar they pay the price. Because if it this doesn’t stop, when a crippled bride or groom won’t even try to walk down the aisle, the minister will dangle the wedding ring tantalizingly above their head, and you know the rest.

Pervert Van

And as soon as a boy gets to be about 12 years old he starts thinking about his dream car. He pictures himself cruising in his brand new Corvette or whatever. He’s the coolest thing on wheels. He’s the hottest thing on wheels.

My dream car was a pervert van. That was as big as I could afford to dream.

George had a pervert van. He was my transportation role model. Because he was way more crippled than me but he really got around. Pervert vans, everyone knows, are those vans without windows. Inside they are just bare metal. No carpet. No flooring. Bare metal walls. At the height of summer, it’s like an oven inside a pervert van. There were only three kinds of people who would buy such a vehicle: 1) small business operators hauling stuff like lumber or drywall, 2) perverts, 3) cripples without a lot of money.

I’m sure these bare-bones vans were never intended by their creators for use by perverts or cripples. But right around the time I turned 12, crafty cripples like George figured out that pervert vans were a cheap and efficient way to get around. Riding in a big old van like that, you could stay in your motorized wheelchair. You didn’t have to dismember your chair so it could fit in a car trunk.

Pervert vans were sort of like these new vans that were recently put in service to take cripples like me to school. They were school-bus yellow. The driver slid open the side door, deployed a sturdy metal ramp and I rolled up and in.

Of course there were windows in the school bus vans. But since pervert vans didn’t have frills like windows, they had much lower price tags. It was also expensive as hell to have one of those metal ramps installed. But never fear, because you could do like George and use a couple of 2 by 4s as a makeshift ramp instead: side door slid open and 2 by 4s lined up the exact distance apart as the width of your wheelchair’s wheel span. You roll up. You hear the 2 by 4s moan and feel them bow and you pray like a mofo that they won’t snap or shift out from under your wheels before you make it to the top.

In the school bus van they firmly secured my wheelchair in place so that if they hit the brakes I wouldn’t turn somersaults, wheelchair and all. They tied the chair down with heavy-duty straps bolted to the floor.

But those straps cost mucho dinero, too. So George employed the 2 by 4s again as poor-man’s securement devices. Lay one on the floor across the front of the wheelchair, wedged under both front wheels and do the same with the other across the back. In the event of a sudden stop or swerve this will hold you in place, sort of.

I never figured that when grew up I would ever have pockets overflowing with money, like the school district. But that was okay because I would still be able to get around as long as I could scrape up enough to buy a pervert van and couple 2 by 4s, like George. He was so damn cool. He was such an inspiration.