Smart Ass Cripple

The Brad Pitt Brain Tumor

2012-03-07T12:04:00.001-06:00

Maureen was complaining about her brain tumor. She had the damn thing removed 21 years ago, but she still has bad spells of vertigo. Sometimes her equilibrium dips and dives like a roller coaster ride.

It’s not supposed to be that way, dammit! Her doctor agrees. There’s no medical explanation for her vertigo, he says. He says somebody ought to make a case study out of her, but nobody’s putting much research money into her kind of brain tumor these days.

And that’s what Maureen complains about. You can’t build a good marketing campaign around a brain tumor like hers. It isn’t sexy enough. Hell, people can’t even pronounce it, let alone organize a bowl-a-thon to cure it. Her brain tumor is a Choroid Plexus Papilloma in the Fourth Ventricle. You don’t need an MBA to know that’s not a very catchy brand name. You can’t even form it into an easy-to-remember acronym, like AIDS. CPPFV? What the hell does that spell?

What her brain tumor needs, Maureen says, is someone like Christopher Reeve. When Christopher Reeve became a quad, oh baby, there was a tsunami of research money for quads. But Maureen’s brain tumor is an unmapped, uncharted, unclaimed publicity wilderness. No celebrity has stuck his or her flag in it, so to speak.

In Maureen’s fantasy, a hot celebrity gets her brain tumor; someone like Brad Pitt. No harm intended. This is a fantasy, so Brad Pitt quickly gets rid of his CPPFV in a holistic, noninvasive fashion. Like maybe he meditates it away or sings it away. And then he gets a brief period of vertigo, just long enough to get the attention of Congress. Because if Congress sees Brad Pitt stumbling around like Maureen stumbles around sometimes, there will be a volcano of research money for CPPFVers.

And then Brad Pitt and Maureen are cured and everybody lives happily ever after. Everybody except Brad Pitt. Because when you’re a celebrity and you get some kind of crippling condition, you may well become synonymous with that crippling condition whether you like it or not. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Christopher Reeve? It ain’t Superman. The crippling condition might even get named after you, like poor Lou Gehrig. Lou Gehrig got screwed all the way around on that proposition. If it happened today, at least he could retain a good copyright lawyer to get him a deal where he gets a nickel or something every time someone says Lou Gehrig’s disease.

CPPFV would become known as the Brad Pitt Brain Tumor, which would suck big time for Brad Pitt. He’d be the Christopher Reeve of brain tumors. Everyone would associate him with brain tumors rather than with his unforgettable movie roles, whatever they are.

That’s why celebrities fear having diseases named after them. It’s a bad career move, unless they’re trying to make a comeback and any publicity will do. The only people who enjoy having diseases named after them are doctors and researchers. For them it’s a big wet dream to have a colon polyp bearing their name, which shows what sickos they are.

Maureen doesn’t put much faith in the possibility of corporate naming rights coming to her rescue either. Wouldn’t it be heavenly if some corporation like Anheuser-Busch ponied up $25 million so CPPFV would be the Budweiser Brain Tumor? That could potentially pack the same marketing wallop as Brad Pitt. But who wants their product to remind people of brain tumors?

So Maureen just hangs on tight, riding her roller coaster.

The Free Parking Martyrs

2012-03-02T11:56:00.001-06:00

Sometimes in life, we forget our roots. We take all the wonderful rights and freedoms we enjoy for granted and we forget about the sacrifices of those who made those rights and freedoms possible.

Take me, for example. As a modern cripple, I have enjoyed a whole lot of free parking for many years. If you have cripple license plates on your car, you usually don’t have to pay for parking at meters.

It’s a sweet gig I tell you. But free parking didn’t just falleth from the sky. Many of my crippled ancestors put their asses on the line so that future generations like me could save a shitload of money on parking. And some of them paid the ultimate price.

It was the 1940s, when most cripples were locked away in sanatoriums, out of sight and out of mind. But four cripples who lived in the same institution were fed up and restless and decided to take action. They wrote a manifesto, which said, “We will no longer tolerate being treated as second class citizens. We will no longer resign ourselves to a future without prospects for education, employment or self-determination. We as cripples must throw off the yoke of oppression and drink from the fountain of justice! Therefore, we demand free parking!”

These were cripples who didn’t even have cars but yet they yearned for free parking. That’s how visionary they were! The manifesto spread like wildfire and soon justice-starved cripples from far and wide demanded free parking too. This groundswell resulted in an historic march, where thousands of cripples took to the streets and converged on the state capitol. But they were met by National Guard troops in full riot gear. Tempers flared. One of the agitated cripples hurled an object in the direction of the police and the clash escalated into what has become known as the infamous free parking riots.

The hurled object was later revealed to be a flaming bag of poop. And the fact that it splattered all over a nearby Mercedes, causing the incensed owner to go through a car wash three times, turned public opinion against the cripples. The four leaders of the march insisted that the poop bomb was the work of an infiltrating provocateur, who allegedly fled the scene on foot. But a jury found each of the four leaders guilty of conduct unbecoming of a cripple, which was a capital offense.

At midnight on November 2, 1947, the four cripples were escorted to the gallows before a jeering crowd. Nooses were tightened around their necks. In an act of final defiance, the four cripples chanted FREE PARKING FOREVER, as their wheelchairs were yanked out from under them.

So whenever I whistle merrily past an expired parking meter, I try to remember to pause and pay silent tribute to my dear brethren, the Free Parking Martyrs. I can’t imagine how empty my life would be if it hadn't been for them. Being crippled really sucks sometimes, but at least I get free parking.

Begging on Easy Street

2012-02-27T13:04:00.000-06:00

There’s this guy in a ragged wheelchair who sits on a street corner about a block away, shaking a Starbucks cup full of coins. His left leg and right arm are missing, which makes him a curious sight indeed. I’ve know many double amputees, but they’ve always been more symmetrical.

He’s out there every day rain or shine, in the brutal heat and blustery wind. Whenever I see him, it hardens my determination to find a way to liberate him and all the other crippled beggars from the indignity of begging on the harsh city streets. This is the 21st Century, for God’s sake. There are much more sophisticated, efficient, high-tech ways for cripples to beg. Cripples should be begging on the internet, from the comfort and safety of their own homes.

Internet begging is pretty much what we do here at Smart Ass Cripple. We sit here on our virtual street corner, telling jokes to passersby. Sometimes they toss coins into that virtual Starbucks cup known as PayPal.

But I want to set up a website, an online community, a one-stop shop for people to give to crippled beggars. It’ll work sort of like a dating site. Crippled beggars in search of benefactors will post a picture and profile: “Hello. My name is Marvin. I’m a Sagittarius and I have leprosy.” (Disclaimer: Benefactor beware. Crippling conditions have not been authenticated.)

Benefactors can choose a beggar from this dazzling gallery. Or they can search for their ideal beggar by entering the essential characteristics of the type of beggar with whom they would be most compatible: age range, crippling condition, religion, level of education, acceptable number of missing teeth. And the computer will pick the perfect match. There can also be a NAME YOUR PRICE feature where the benefactor offers up a bid, say like 50 cents, and it goes to whichever crippled beggar snatches it first. Or they can adopt-a-beggar, where they set up an automatic transfer of funds to go to the Starbucks cup of same beggar every month.

One hundred per cent of all funds donated go directly to the crippled beggars, minus my modest processing fee.

Internet begging will dramatically improve the quality of life for crippled beggars. They’ll just roll out of bed and check their PayPal. They won’t have to deal with the dangers of street begging, like extreme weather and mafia shakedowns. And best of all, the police won’t chase them off the street when the Olympics come to town.

I’ll call it crippledbeggars.com. I could make it crippledbeggars.org but screw that. I think I can make a lot of money off of this thing.

Area of Rescue Assistance

2012-02-22T15:00:00.000-06:00

It reminds me of the time I went to the ballet and caused a scene. This was way back before there were wheelchair sections in theaters. The usher escorted me to my seat and said I’d have to transfer out of my wheelchair into the theater seat so he could take my wheelchair away and store it in a distant closet for “safety reasons.” A wheelchair in the aisle was a fire hazard, he said, because it interferes with people escaping a fire. I asked how I was supposed to escape a fire without my wheelchair. He said don’t worry, if there’s a fire my wheelchair will be brought right back to me, as soon as everybody else gets out. With a crazy emergency plan like that, it seemed to me like this guy was suffering from some form of smoke inhalation. So I said there was no way I’d give up my chair. He said I must. I said no way. He said I must. And back and forth it went until the ballet patrons looked at us like we were causing a scene. It’s not hard to cause a scene among ballet fans.

The usher placed my party and me in a secluded recess of the ballet house, where he felt confident I could stay in my chair without selfishly impeding those legitimately trying to escape burning to death. But that’s the way it still is on the airlines. Cripples have to sit in regular airline seats and they stow our wheelchairs with the damn baggage. And the flight attendants reassure us that if all hell breaks loose, they’ll come drag us to safety, as soon as everyone else gets out.

It’s an age old question that still baffles the sharpest minds of today: When everything bursts into flames, what do you do with the cripples? Because the first thing that happens when there’s a fire is the elevators shut down, which isn’t the most cripple-friendly move.

But what else can you do? The best idea anyone’s been able to come up with is putting up signs that say AREA OF RESCUE ASSISTANCE. This instructs cripples where to find “safe harbor” where we can calmly wait to be saved. Safe harbor? In a burning building? If it’s so damn safe why doesn’t everybody wait there, instead of stampeding to get the hell out?

The only way I’ll ever feel completely safe is if I have a dedicated security goon with me 24/7, ready to scoop me up and carry me out of harm’s way in case of fire. I know this will never happen. I can’t afford to hire security goons. But why not a gorilla? Fuck service monkeys. I need a service gorilla. If they can train service monkeys to pick pencils up off the floor and shit, why can’t they train a gorilla to carry me? Gorillas are smart as hell. They’re almost people. And because they’re not quite people, they don’t complain about working all day every day.

My gorilla will wear a windbreaker that says SECURITY across the back. I may never need my gorilla’s help, God willing. But just knowing he’s right by my side will make it much easier for me to enjoy myself at the ballet. We’ll relax in our seats on the plane, my gorilla and I, drinking Bloody Marys. But at the first sign of pandemonium he flings me over his shoulder like a potato sack and delivers me to true safe harbor, swatting down and trampling any poor sap who gets in our way.

As a cripple, I deserve this accommodation. I have a right to be safe. I’m going to write my Congressman right now. There ought to be federal funding for this.

Lorenzo Milam review of Smart Ass Cripple's Little Red Book

2012-02-19T21:59:00.001-06:00

I'm delighted to post this review of Smart Ass Cripple's Little Red Book by the great Lorenzo Milam, author of Crip Zen.

Please check it out:

http://www.ralphmag.org/GV/smart-ass-cripple.html

Smart Ass Cripple's Little Red Book is available at

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/smart-ass-cripples-little-red-book/18640517

Or just click the lulu button to the left.

Hard Bargain

2012-02-17T14:11:00.002-06:00

I’m depressed. I’ve been depressed before but this is for real. Up until now, I’ve been able to temper my bouts of depression by self-medicating with Cheetos.

But I must have built up an immunity. Because these days I’m constantly worried that something terrible is about to happen to me and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to have to face one of my worst fears. I dread what will happen to me if I don’t get cured. The only thing I dread more is what will happen to me if I do get cured.

My fear of being cured goes way back to when I was a tiny kid. Here we were, my sister and I, poster children. We were the human face of tragedy. They put us on television, broke us out at banquets and bowl-a-thons and parades, all in the name of cure. But the whole thing felt creepy because I never wanted to be cured. Hell no! Why should I? Why strangle the golden goose? The only reason I got to go on TV and eat pheasant and wild rice at banquets was because I was crippled. If I got cured I’d be shooting myself in the foot. My sister got to ride on a parade float once. The only difference between her and me and the other kids in the neighborhood, who would never in a million years get to ride on a parade float, was that they weren’t crippled.

The older I’ve gotten, the deeper my fear of being cured has taken root. Nothing terrifies my inner smart ass more than the prospect of me suddenly not being crippled. It’s the same reason so many comedians were terrified at the prospect of losing George Bush as president. There goes an endless source of rich joke material, which is a precious natural resource. Being crippled also gives me something that every human being longs for: a gimmick. It’s a shortcut to the spotlight. Why would anyone want to give that up? If I’m not crippled, what am I? I’m just another white guy, just another smart ass.

But lately I’m worried that if people like me don’t hurry up and get cured soon, there will be hell to pay. Because I’m starting to figure out that in attempting to come to terms with the phenomenon of cripples, the rest of uncrippled society goes through stages (sort of like the Kubler-Ross stages of grief). The first stage is Denial. This stage began right around the time of the appearance of the first cripple. RX: lock the cripples in the closet or smother them or turn them over to the nuns.

Then next stage is Bargaining. That began about 50 years ago. In this stage, cripples get to come out into the sunlight as long as it doesn’t go on forever. Cripples have to work hard at someday not being crippled. That’s our end of the bargain. The Bargaining stage is characterized by telethons and other such extravaganzas of the Charity Industrial Complex.

But I wonder how long it will be before the good will of the Bargaining stage deteriorates into the next and final stage of Anger. This charity stuff’s been going on for more than half a century and there are just as many cripples around as there ever were, except for the polios. Why can’t the rest of the cripples be like those nice polios?

How long before the uncrippled villagers get sick of waiting for us to deliver and start burning cripples in effigy? How long before they feel suckered and kick down our doors, throw us out of the wheelchair they bought for us and take them to the pawn shops in an attempt to salvage some return on their investment?

Charity is not a thing to be trifled with. So I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I wish I could just be crippled in peace.

Snowbound

2012-02-11T10:03:00.000-06:00

Once again this year there were no commercials selling wheelchairs during the Super Bowl. I assume this is true. I don’t know for sure because I only saw about one third of the Super Bowl. I can’t bring myself to watch the whole Super Bowl because so many zillions of people are watching it and I’m a knee-jerk contrarian. I like to defiantly zig when the others zag, even if it doesn’t make sense. If I see a NO PARKING sign, I say to myself “Screw you I’ll park here if I damn well please.” If I see a NO SMOKING sign, I say to myself “Screw you I’ll smoke here if I damn well please,” even though I don’t smoke. This powerful contrarian impulse is why I’m tormented by DON’T WALK signs.

The last time I saw a commercial selling a wheelchair was while I was watching Bonanza. True confession: Last winter we had a blizzard in Chicago. I was so utterly snowbound, physically and emotionally, that I gave up and watched Bonanza. This is another sad story of the tragic human consequences of climate change. There were all kinds of other commercials aimed square at the cripple demographic during Bonanza. There were commercials for lawyers who will get you a big settlement for all your pain and suffering and commercials for other lawyers who will take the structured settlement the lawyer in the previous commercial got for you and turn it into a lump sum. There were commercials for incontinence pads with empowering names like Poise and Prevail. But they’re still delivered in discreet brown wrapping so your mail carrier won’t know you piss your pants.

But there were no commercials for any of this stuff during the Super Bowl, which shows what Madison Avenue really thinks about cripples. They think we sit around and watch Bonanza. They think we’re eternally snowbound. You’ll never see a commercial for a wheelchair or incontinence pads during the Super Bowl for the same reason you’ll never see a coffin commercial during the Super Bowl: it’s too goddam depressing. People want to relax and enjoy the game. They don’t want to be reminded about shit like death and wheelchairs and pissing your pants. (The closest thing I ever saw to a coffin commercial was when I was in college in southern Illinois. There was this company that sold gravestones. In their TV commercials they frequently offered a limited-time special deal: buy a gravestone now and when you die you get a free erection. I swear this is true. I clearly remember the words FREE ERECTION flashing on the screen.)

You won’t see a wheelchair commercial on the Super Bowl ever though the wheelchairs you see in the commercials on Bonanza have cutesy names to make them palatable, like LI’L RASCAL. God I hate those fucking names! What can’t a wheelchair have a badass name, like THE BADASS? Motorcycles have badass names but wheelchairs have to be cutesy. This double standard says something quite profound about our collective psyche, though I have no idea what.
What more do cripples have to do to be validated by Madison Avenue? If cutesy doesn’t work, it seems like nothing will. It makes you want to throw up your hands and go watch a Bonanza marathon.

Doggie Style

2012-02-06T13:03:00.001-06:00

There was this cerebral palsy kid at the state-operated boarding school for cripples. Sometimes we called him “Doggie Style.” He didn’t mind that nickname. He thought it was cool.

This kid couldn’t feed himself. At mealtimes, the kids who couldn’t feed themselves were assigned to the same table so our adult keepers could double up, feeding one kid with the right hand and one with the left. But one day there was a perfectly good plate of food on the table in front of him and the keepers were busy doing something else. The kid was hungry, so he leaned forward, stuck his face in his food and ate it right off his plate without using his hands.

Doggie style!

Now of course when the other kids saw him do this, we hooted and hollered and gagged. And of course the adult keepers admonished him never to do it again. It was degrading! Be patient and wait for one of the keepers to come!

The kid seemed perplexed by the reaction, but he stopped eating doggie style and waited for someone to feed him in the proper, socially-acceptable way. But there were other times when if the keepers weren’t around to give him a hard time about it, he wasn’t at all ashamed to eat doggie style. I saw him eat an entire bologna sandwich doggie style once. There was no one there to feed him so what the hell. Fuck table manners. And he was quite adept at eating doggie style. He could clean his plate in no time. And we all watched with adolescent fascination, the same way we might watch a guy swallow a bug or put out a lit match with his tongue on a dare.

I don’t know whatever happened him. But if you’re still out there, Doggie Style, I want to say I know now that you were a pioneer. I could learn a lot from you. My life could be a whole lot easier if I could just relax and let myself do it doggie style, like you.

And I hope, Doggie Style, when it’s all said and done, that you will get the last laugh. That is the great reward of being a pioneer. I hope, when need be, you still do it doggie style. Because why not? When a man’s gotta eat, and man’s gotta eat, right? So take charge! Assert your autonomy! Liberate polite society from its stupid hang up about doing it doggie style. A lot of us are counting on you.

I know you probably got thrown out of a lot of public places. You may have even been arrested for doing it doggie style. But I hope you persevered and still keep doing it . I hope you go to great lavish banquets, sit up on the dais in your tux, and do it doggie style. I hope you stick your face in the punch bowl and gulp, like bobbing for apples.

Because a lot of us look to you for hope and inspiration. We know the slings and arrows you suffer will make it easier for others like us to proudly and openly do it doggie style. I can no longer feed myself so well, at least not using my arms. But often I can feed myself easy, if I do it doggie style. I find myself in your situation. There it is right there, delicious food, but no keeper to assist. The food heckles me. I could conquer it easy, lean forward and lick that plate sparkling clean, if I wasn’t afraid of what others might think if they saw me doing it doggie style. So instead I mourn.

But I’m getting better. Sometimes when I’m home alone, I do it doggie style. And I find it quite satisfying. Someday soon, I hope, I’ll come out of the closet.

A Burden to Society

2012-01-30T12:24:00.002-06:00

Every time I take a leak, it costs the state of Illinois 38 cents. The state pays $11.50 per hour to the people I hire to help me take a leak. That’s about 19 cents a minute. I guesstimate that on average, each leak takes about two minutes, from unzip to zip. If I leak four times daily, on average, that’s $1.52. Extrapolate that out over a year and that’s $554!

Each time I sit on the crapper, that’s about 20 minutes. So that carries a price tag of $3.80 a day or $1387 a year. That’s $1941 of taxpayer money eaten up by one man’s bodily functions!

And that doesn’t even count all the other stuff my workers do for me, such as putting on my pants ($208 a year), brushing my teeth, ($244) and making my armpit smell like a cool sea breeze ($226).

There’s no doubt about it. The numbers don’t lie. I am a burden to society.

And just look at the fallout. People like me are stretching state budgets to the limit. Thus, foreclosures are at an all-time high. Hardworking Americans are losing their jobs. Small businesses are collapsing.

This can’t continue. Times are tough. We all have to sacrifice. The golden days of cripples wearing pants seven days a week are over.

I could argue that I am a taxpayer too. But who am I kidding? I paid about $800 in state income tax last year. That only covers the cost of all the leaks I took plus 65 days of sitting on the crapper. That means 300 of my shits are being paid for by someone else.

It’s clear I’ve got to give something up. I’m trying to figure out what. I could take a leak just thrice daily and sit on the crapper once every 36 hours instead of every 24. But this only saves the state $337 a year. And curtailing my time spent eliminating bodily waste would have a severe negative impact on my quality of life. I’d have to give up two of the things that make life most worth living: beer and Mexican food.

So let’s see, if I also reduce my daily crapper time to 15 minutes (I’ll put an egg timer in the bathroom), that saves an additional $347. If I stop wearing socks, there’s another $139. But the state legislature will demand a whole lot more than that. I could, I suppose, challenge their methodology. I could reasonably argue that since my taxes fund all my leaks plus nine weeks of sitting on the crapper, those costs should not be considered when calculating the weight of my burden

As a further concession, to demonstrate good faith, I could have my pits washed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and deodorize on Tuesdays and Thursdays to tide me over. That adds up to an annual savings of---.

I’m sorry but I can’t continue writing this. My calculator just overheated and exploded.

The Feeble-Minded Football League

2012-01-23T20:40:00.001-06:00

Well I guess I feel better now. At least I didn’t go to a school for the feeble minded.

Like I’ve said, the state-operated cripple boarding school from which I obtained my high school diploma is called the Illinois Children’s Hospital School. I called it the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT) because I hated the hell out of the real name. What college admissions department was going to take me seriously when my diploma said I was not just a child but a child who needed to be hospitalized?

But there used to be a whole bunch of state-operated schools called schools for the feeble minded. My favorite is the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth.

So first off, what the hell’s with the judgmental names? Feeble minded? Idiotic? As if any human isn’t at some point. They could have at least had the decency to call them schools for the feeble mindedest and idioticer. Are those even words? See how feeble minded I am?

But when you’re hung with a label like feeble minded, it’s like being skunked. It’s pretty damn hard to get rid of it. By some miracle (or computer glitch), my diploma got me into Southern Illinois University. But if I went to a school for the feeble minded, even the University of Phoenix wouldn’t take me. I wouldn’t even get into that fashion design school I see commercials for when I watch the Three Stooges. (I suppose this is a moot point. Schools for the feeble minded don't sound like places from which anyone ever graduates anyway.)

We crips at the cripple school didn’t have any of the big extracurricular stuff high school students get excited about. We didn’t have a high school prom. You can argue about whether that’s good or bad, but we didn’t have one. I’m sure the same was true for the poor feebs at the feeble minded schools. Who in the outside community would step up to provide a venue for such an event? Would the local Holiday Inn be willing to have WELCOME PROM FOR THE FEEBLE MINDED posted on its marquee? Charity only goes so far.

At our cripple school, we didn’t have a yearbook. And we didn’t have a football team either. I hope they at least let them have football teams at the feeble minded schools. Hell, there were once so many schools for the feeble minded across America that they could have formed the Feeble-Minded Football League. Just about every state also had a “Lunatic Hospital” so if they too had their own football league, there could have been an annual championship game: Loonies versus Feebs. As grand a tradition as Army versus Navy.

I know it’s pie-in-the-sky to think the inmates at the schools for the feeble minded were allowed any extracurriculars. Their curriculars probably consisted of playing checkers and Go Fish and drinking warm milk laced with knockout drops. When you’re hung with a label like feeble minded, it’s like there’s a cowbell surgically attached to your tailbone. It clangs whenever you flinch, warning the villagers that the feeble minded might be on the loose.

Legally Crippled

2012-01-18T12:40:00.001-06:00

A curious reader writes:

Dear Smart Ass,

How do I know if someone is really and truly crippled? Is there a legal definition? You know how some people are legally blind? Is there such a thing as legally crippled?

Yours in Wonder,
Mr. Inquisitive

Dear Mr. Inquisitive,
One thing that really pisses me off is how we smug, homocentric humans laugh at dogs when they sniff each other’s ass holes. But I think dogs get the last laugh. We see butt sniffing as crude, but it’s really a sophisticated form of mammalian communication. To humans, all dog butts smell alike. Try an experiment. Put on a blindfold and sniff the butts of five dogs. Then take off the blindfold and try to figure out which dog was which. You’ll fail, because when it comes to olfactory evolution, humans are the primitive ones. When a dog takes a deep, savory sniff of another dogs butt, it’s like a sommelier sloshing wine in his/her mouth, trying to discern the delicate bouquet, the full body, the fruity finish. I bet dogs' butt holes are like human fingerprints or DNA in that they are all unique. No two smell alike to another dog. Dogs' butt holes are the windows to their souls. But only other dogs are advanced enough to know this.

There used to be a big dog in my building named Bob. He liked to sniff people’s butts as well as dog butts. Bob and his human were in the elevator one day when I entered with Andrew, one of my assistants. Bob snuck a sniff of Andrew’s butt before his human yanked him back. Andrew didn’t notice a thing. He faced front, his mind drifting, his eyes fixed on the descending numbers above the elevator door. So later, when he was driving my vehicle, I said to Andrew, “Bob was sniffing your butt!”

Andrew was shocked, indignant “What! When?”

“A little while ago,” I said. “He does it all the time.”

Andrew kept shaking his head in disgust. He couldn’t get over his indignation. He seemed so violated. But it was just a damn dog. Then I remembered Andrew was also an assistant for a quadriplegic, whom he helped that morning before he came to help me. The quad’s name was Bob. So I quickly cleared it up for Andrew exactly which Bob it was that sniffed his butt. He felt much better after that, his faith in humanity restored. Good thing, otherwise Andrew might have sent Bob the quad one helluvan embarrassing resignation letter.

But anyway, for a legal definition of crippledom, most people turn to the Americans with Disabilities Act: “ a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.“ But that’s all bull shit. I’ll tell you how it really works. Every year, there’s a secret meeting of every cripple in the world. It’s called the Every Cripple in the World Meeting. This year it was held at the Holidome in Sandusky, Ohio.

I’m probably going to be killed for divulging all this. But I love you so much, my dear readers, that I’m willing to die for you. The main purpose of the Every Cripple in the World Meeting is for us all to get our secret official cripple stamp, which makes us legally crippled. It’s just like how they stamp your hand when you go to a bar or a concert. Except cripples get their tongues stamped. Because the stamp has to be in a place where cripples can easily show it to other cripples when they meet. But not all cripples can raise their hands. Some cripples don’t even have hands to raise. But nobody’s so crippled that they can’t stick out they’re tongue, unless they’re in a coma.

You have to get your official secret cripple stamp renewed every year or you’re not allowed to be crippled any more. You have to sit it out for a year. Only cripples with up-to-date stamps have the ability to see other cripples’ secret stamps. So, the secret official cripple stamp works on the same principle as butt sniffing in dogs. To the outsider, when two cripples stick their tongues out at each other, it just looks stupid. But those of us who are legally crippled know exactly what it means.

There is a way, however, for an outsider to determine if someone else might be legally crippled. Every cripple who receives an official secret tongue stamp also receives a free gift. This year we all got a brand new four-slice toaster from our good friends at Proctor Silex. So if you suspect someone you know of being legally crippled but you need hard evidence, try to get a look at their toaster.

Smart Ass Cripple’s Good Old Fashioned Down Home Brace Burning

2012-01-11T18:18:00.002-06:00

When I think about torture, which I do often, I think of Connie Francis and Milwaukee. It’s not their fault. They’re a fine enough pop singer and city, respectively. It’s just that I can’t help but associate them both with torture.

As for Connie Francis, it’s Wheatley’s fault. He was this guy with cerebral palsy who was my first roommate at the state-operated boarding school for cripples. His most treasured possessions were his two Connie Francis albums. Those were the only albums he had and he played them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over… I can still hear her voice echoing through the dark, haunted corridors of my psyche:

“Lipstick on your collar

Told a tale on you-woo.

Lipstick on your collar

Said you were untrue-woo.”

And Wheatley played it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over… And he sang along, too, except it was more like a howl. And I’m 13 years old and here I am trapped in this place! I’m slowly morphing into an axe murderer. Everyone has experienced this form of torture and the insanity it induces. It’s like when you’ve got a song stuck in your head and you can’t beat it or shake it out for the life of you. The songs that get stuck in your head are always profoundly annoying songs, like jingles from car dealer commercials or anything by Kenny G. You never get Mozart stuck in your head. And the song burrows in deep like a brain-eating parasite and taunts you with increasing delight until you start searching the internet for the nearest 24-hour lobotomy lab. And if you can’t get a lobotomy on demand soon, you’ll give yourself one through the ear with a knitting needle. Anything to make it stop!

And Milwaukee reminds me of torture because it is the birthplace of the Milwaukee brace. I wore a Milwaukee brace throughout my teens. Here’s a picture:

For those who can’t see, it’s a plastic girdle that fits around the pelvis and hips. A vertical metal bar runs up the front to just under the chin, where a padded perch rests. Two similar bars run parallel up the back to behind the skull, where there is a padded headrest. The idea was to prevent scoliosis.

I remember when I was fitted for my Milwaukee brace there was a sling hanging down from a little crane above my head and the brace maker secured the sling under my chin and cranked me up until I dangled just above the exam table. And then he wrapped plaster around my trunk. I felt like a fucking piñata! I kept expecting kids to burst into the room and beat me with sticks.

When you wear a Milwaukee brace, you feel like you’re wearing a barrel. You feel about as sexy and attractive (and agile and nimble) as a guy wearing a barrel, too. And you’re supposed to wear it 23 hours a day every day forever, only talking it off to bathe.

When I went away to college, living on my own in the dorm, I ditched the Milwaukee brace.

Generations of cripples have experienced this form of torture. It gives me a notion to start a new annual ritual: Smart Ass Cripple’s Good Old Fashioned Down Home Brace Burning. I’ll build a huge bonfire. Cripples from all over the universe can come, bring all their old albatross braces and throw them in. Then we all dance naked.

It will be intensely therapeutic. It will help me exorcise those nightmares of an adolescence spent squeezed into a Milwaukee brace, listening to Connie Francis.

Rent-A-Cripple

2012-01-06T13:04:00.001-06:00

John, one of my assistants, said he had to get up off his ass and finally go renew his driver’s license. He’s put it off because he dreads waiting in the long line at the DMV.

Just then, a bold, superhero voice in my head bellowed: “This is a job for Rent-A-Cripple!”

Rent-A-Cripple is my imaginary temp employment agency for cripples. There are times when having a cripple hanging around can be very advantageous for a “vert” (which is short for vertical, which is slang for people who walk.) These are the times when verts should make an SOS call to Rent-A-Cripple.

John could get through the DMV in a flash if he hired me to go with him. Because for some reason, whenever I show up there they wave me right on through, right up to the service window. And the frustrated verts corralled in the queue look at me with a combination of resentment and alarm. Half of them seem to think I’m being hustled ahead because I’m a bitter cripple who thinks the whole damn world owes him something. The rest seem to think I’m being hustled ahead because maybe I’m contagious.

Disney World was once a great place to hire Rent-A-Cripple. Like the DMV, being crippled was often a free pass to the front of the lines. My friend Marca, who’s a paraplegic, took her kids to Disney World way back when they were small. And it sure seemed to her that there were an awful lot of people rolling around in Disney loaner wheelchairs. And then she overheard a family in the guest services line have the following discussion:

Dad said, “Now remember, Suzie, it’s your turn to act like you need a wheelchair.”

And Suzie said, “I don’t wanna do it! Make Billy do it!”

And Billy said, “I did it last time! You do it!”

And sure enough, later on, Marca saw Billy pushing a pouting Suzie in a Disney loaner wheelchair. I’m told Disney World is a lot more accessible these days so cripples often wait in line with everybody else, thanks to that fucking Americans With Disabilities Act!

Rent-A-Cripple provides employment opportunities for lots of people with Down syndrome. If your reputation needs to be repaired or reframed, it can be very advantageous to have someone with Down syndrome on retainer. Because when you see someone with Down syndrome, what’s the first thing you think? You think “Special Olympics,” right? Good! Stop right there! That’s as far as you need to think! Down syndrome people have this image of always being warm and cuddly. Of course they’re way more complex than that, but that’s the image they’re all stuck with until one of them goes out and robs a bank or something.

So when you’re seen in public with someone with Down syndrome, you proclaim that you are a friend to someone with “special needs.” This is always a PR goldmine, especially if your special someone with “special needs” is a baby. Remember Sarah Palin at the ’08 republican convention? She’s up there giving her speech and whenever they showed a shot of her family, there was her special needs baby in someone’s arms. And the baby was always asleep. All around, 30,000 republicans screamed their fool fucking heads off. A brass band blared. And through it all, the baby remained passed out like a drunk on the subway. Either that baby was chock-full of barbiturates or that was really a stand-in stunt baby someone found in the prop closet. Either way, it got the point across.

Rent-A-Cripple does not come with a money-back guarantee. I can’t promise that having one of us hanging around you will always achieve your desired result. That’s a good thing; otherwise Sarah Palin would be vice president.

Sarcoma? Hooray!

2012-01-02T19:33:00.006-06:00

Once upon a time, not long ago, there lived a woman named Madame Curie (Smart Ass Cripple alias). Madame Curie lived in the United States. The state she lived in was the state of Dysfunction (another Smart Ass Cripple alias).

Madame Curie lived in a modest house with her husband and their adult son, Popeye the Sailor (one last Smart Ass Cripple alias). Popeye the Sailor had what the people who wear white medical coats now call an “intellectual disability.” His parents loved Popeye the Sailor very much and treated him very well, but he didn’t want to live in their house any more, for the same reasons most 27-year-olds don’t want to live in their parents’ house any more.

So Madame Curie set out in search of a small, community-integrated group home where Popeye the Sailor could live with a measure of autonomy and independence. But she soon learned that in the state of Dysfunction, this was a futile quest. She learned that loving her son and treating him well had been a major tactical error on her part. Because in the state of Dysfunction, such community-integrated housing opportunities were as rare as steak tartare and only available to people like Popeye the Sailor if they were being abused or neglected or were homeless or in an “emergency” situation like that!

So Popeye the Sailor was stuck in his parents’ home for who knows how long. He could be there until he was 90 years old, as long as his parents didn’t abuse or neglect him or throw him out in the streets.

But this tale has a happy ending, thanks to the merciful intervention of cancer! That’s right, Madame Curie was diagnosed with sarcoma. With chemotherapy, the doctors said, her chances of survival were 50-50.

Sarcoma? 50-50 chance of survival? Hooooraaay! That’s how a big part of Madame Curie reacted to the news. Because in the state of Dysfuction, people like Popeye the Sailor were also potentially qualified for an “emergency” designation if their parents or guardians were dead or dying.

This was Madame Curie’s lucky break! She reported her cancer diagnosis to the authorities in the state of Dysfunction. It was Madame Curie’s intention to beat the sarcoma and survive, but she didn’t tell the authorities that part. She played up the grim part. She knew that was the game she had to play if she wanted to get what was best for her son in the state of Dysfunction.

Today, thanks to sarcoma, Popeye the Sailor lives in a small group home. He’s relatively happy and free. And Madame Curie is seven-years cancer free. I give them aliases because I don’t want to risk shattering their tranquility. Because who knows, if the authorities in the state of Dysfunction read this and find out Madame Curie is alive and well, they might feel duped. Human Services budgets are tight and getting tighter and they can’t have people using things like cancer as an excuse to scam the system. The authorities may decide they have no choice but to make an example of Popeye the Sailor by extracting him from his community home and involuntarily relocating him back with his parents. And then, if Madame Curie truly loves her son, she’ll have to abuse him.

Boring Scars

2011-12-26T17:08:00.000-06:00

I’m very self-conscious about the cripple scars I have on my body. I don’t like talking about them because they’re so damn boring.

There’s one on the back of my left calf. It’s been there forever. I don’t remember how it got there. My mother said it’s from when doctors took a muscle biopsy when I was a baby so they could diagnose why I was crippled.

See what I mean? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. There’s no wild and crazy Purple Heart cripple story behind that scar. That’s the problem when you’re like me and the only thing you had to do to become crippled was get born. The only scar I have to show for that is my navel. Big deal. Everybody’s got one of those. And the story of how it got there is always the same. You’ve only got a crazy story if you don’t have one.

But when some cripples talk about how they got their most prominent scars, the audience is riveted, especially when everybody’s drunk. It’s often a story of great adventure. I knew a guy who claimed he became a quad because he wiped out on a luge while preparing for the Olympics. I heard another guy swear up and down that he was the “agony of defeat” skier they showed wiping out every week at the beginning of the TV show “Wide World of Sports.” That’s how he became crippled, he said. Sometimes the story behind a cripple scar has a comic twist. Like maybe somebody wiped out skiing, but it was cross-country skiing. They swerved to avoid a chipmunk or something like that. I know a guy who broke his neck diving into water. That’s a boring vanilla account, except he and others were celebrating the end of their college final exams by skinny dipping in a quarry. So when he was pulled out of the water, he and his rescuers were all in their birthday suits.

So when other cripples throw around war stories about their scars, I feel crushingly inadequate, like a 35-year-old virgin at a party where everyone’s drunk and bragging about their sexual exploits. My mind races to find a way to exit inconspicuously before they call on me.

The winning cripple scar story I’ve heard was about this paraplegic guy I knew back when. He didn’t have a scar per se. It was a tire track. As the story went, this guy was at a drunken kegger barbecue party in a big open field. He stated making out with a woman and things got hot and heavy so they went to the other side of a grassy hill so they could have oral sex in privacy. Shortly thereafter, another partier left the kegger and he drove his pickup truck over the grassy hill and when he got to the other side he made a startling discovery. And that, allegedly, is how the paraplegic guy became a paraplegic. He got run over while in the throes of ecstasy. And to this day he had a tire track embedded across his back to prove it. Allegedly.

I never heard this story from the man himself. Other cripples whispered about it. They said if you asked him about it he’d show you his tire track. But I never got up the nerve. I feared maybe these other smart ass cripples made it all up and then snickered and placed bets on how long it would take me to ask the guy if I could see his tire track. I wouldn’t put it past them to do that.

Mandatory Exoskeletons

2011-12-20T17:20:00.002-06:00

I’m pretty fucking depressed these days. It seems like my nightmare, dystopian vision of the future for cripples is rapidly becoming reality. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

All over the world, evil, mad scientists are working with feverish, sadistic glee developing robotic exoskeletons. Check it out. Google up some exoskeletons and you’ll see what I mean. A lot of these scientists are pursuing this research in the name of using exoskeletons to enable cripples to move their limbs again. They’re making tremendous progress and it’s pretty damn scary. Because soon those super-charged exoskeletons like the one that guy flies around in in the movie “Iron Man” will be an everyday reality. And as soon as that happens, every cripple will be required by the state to have one.

When you look at it from a cold, bureaucratic bean-counter’s perspective, it makes perfect sense. Why should the public trough pay for cripples to have human assistants accompany them all day and help them do stuff when you can make those same cripples wear exoskeletons and suddenly they can move everything they couldn't move before and do stuff for themselves? The more crippled the person, the more of an exoskeleton they’ll need. Like a single amputee would just get a corresponding bionic arm or leg and they’re off to the races. But someone who’s really really crippled, like me or Christopher Reeve, if we’re supposed to do everything for ourselves we’ll have to be assigned a full-body exoskeleton like the “Iron Man” guy’s. And we'll need a voice-command operated exoskeleton, which is the part that scares the hell out of me most. Because you don’t have to be crippled to know how fucked up voice-command technology is. All you have to do is call any random customer service number and try to maneuver past the robot-voiced gatekeepers that stand between you and another human. I absolutely hate calling AMTRAK because you get this ebullient robot voice named Julie. And here’s how it goes:

“Hello, my name is Julie. What is your destination city?”

“Milwaukee.”

“Okay, Peoria.

“No.”

“I’m sorry. Let’s try again. What is your destination city?”

“Mil-wauuuu-keeeee!”

“Okay, Lubbock, Texas. And what is your departure date?

“NO! MIL-WAUUUU-KEEEEE!”

“Okay, Wednesday.

“ NO! MILWAUKEE! YOU DEAF BITCH!!!!

“I’m sorry. Did you say Memphis?”

And then I want to smash the phone into a billion pieces with a GODDAM SLEDGEHAMMER!

It won’t matter if voice-command technology still sucks in the future. They’ll make cripples use it to pilot our exoskeletons anyway, just like they make everybody use it now for customer service. My human assistant places me in my suit-of-armor exoskeleton in the morning, latches me in and boots it up. Then he leaves and my exoskeleton takes over.

“Good morning, sir,” says my ebullient exoskeleton. “Where would you like to go?”

“Let’s go to the bathroom. I have to piss.”

“Fly to the North Pole? Yes sir, right away!” And before I can say squat I’m skyrocketing through outer space, trapped in a runaway exoskeleton! We land on the North Pole. My exoskeleton says:

“Where to now, sir?”

“TAKE ME HOME YOU IDIOT!!”

But it’s fucking cold on the North Pole and my exoskeleton’s robotics freeze up so he collapses into a useless heap! And there I die of hypothermia.

In this dystopian future, crash–landed exoskeletons with dead cripples inside will be a common sight. When you look at it from a cold, bureaucratic bean-counter’s perspective, it makes perfect sense.

Cool Enough for Robo

2011-12-16T18:11:00.001-06:00

I spent five years as an inmate at the state operated boarding school for cripples and none of the other inmates ever invited me to one of their top secret Robo sessions.

I guess I wasn’t cool enough. I was, however, cool enough to hang out in the canteen. That’s where the coolest inmates hung, in the alcove with the vending machines and the microwave. That’s where they smoked. I even achieved enough coolness status to be allowed to sit at a table in the canteen with one of the inmates who had “smoking privileges.” Those were the coolest inmates of all. They were over 18 and they had their parents' or guardian’s permission to smoke. (They all smoked Kools.) The rest of us, if we got caught smoking by the staff, we might get busted. When you got busted you were banished to your room for a stretch of days. No visitors except your roommate. No going to the canteen. So the rest of us, to sneak a smoke, we had to sit at a table with an inmate who had smoking privileges. Take a quick puff and set the cigarette back down fast in the ashtray in front of the inmate with the smoking privileges in case a staff person pops up. Then you’ve got cover. The privileged one pretends the cigarette is theirs. The privileged ones had to think you were cool enough for them to front for you like that. So they were the ultimate arbiters of who was cool. You could never be the coolest of the cool if you didn’t have your smoking privileges.

But I was never formally invited to drink Robo. Robo— slang for Robitussin. Harvey, the polio kid with the slight Kentucky drawl, was the one who talked about getting high on Robo. Harvey talked a lot about getting high. He told me one morning he got high the night before just by staring at his hairbrush. I tried it that night with my hairbrush. All I did was fall asleep.

Harvey was cool, but he would never advance beyond mid-level cool because his parents wouldn’t sign for him to have smoking privileges. So I think he compensated by designating himself the arbiter of an ever higher level of cool —Robo cool. Robo was the top shelf stuff, Harvey said. Fuck Nyquil, that nasty rotgut shit!

So every now and then Harvey leaned toward me and said, “I’m gonna score some Robo,” in the same hushed tone the spies used in those spy movies he watched. Then Harvey raised a hopeful eyebrow, as if telling me to stand by for details. The whole Robo thing was top secret, he said, so I expected he’d eventually let me in on the location of a top secret hidden map (maybe inside a toilet tank?) that would lead me to the underground Robo den. Just like in those spy movies!

But no! No such scavenger hunt leads ever materialized. And then one day there’d be Harvey bragging in hushed spy tones about how he and some other cool guys (who shall remain nameless) got ripped on Robo last night.

Dammit! I wanted to ask some of the other inmates that I suspected were cool enough to be invited for Robo for top secret tips on what cool things I could to do to elevate my status to Robo cool. But nobody besides Harvey ever peeped a word about doing Robo, probably because it was top secret. So I never said a word either. I didn’t want to blow whatever chance I had for upward mobility. So I just worked hard on becoming cooler, hoping to someday be deemed Robo cool.

But I was never cool enough

Leeches

2011-12-11T14:04:00.001-06:00

How about those old-time FDR wheelchairs? All wicker and wood, rigid and perpendicular. As agile and nimble as a covered wagon. As comfortable as an X-ray table.

Whenever I see one of those FDR wheelchairs, I get a bad case of the willies. But it’s way worse than just the willies. It’s a cold, deep shudder.

What if I was a cripple back then? I didn’t miss by much. Just make me about 15 years older and there I am. Having an FDR wheelchair was the best cripples back then could hope for. That was our shining symbol of hope and liberation. Back then, I’d have been sooooooo screwed. I’d have been stranded if I had to get around by pushing an FDR wheelchair. Hell, even those linebacker cripples of today who do marathons in their wheelchairs would be stranded if all they had were FDR wheelchairs. That’s the equivalent of trying to run a marathon in a potato sack.

And what about way way way back, back before there were even any FDR wheelchairs? What was the symbol of hope and liberation for a cripple like me way back then? Leeches? The doctors cover me with leeches that can suck all the muscular dystrophy out of me? Then what? Way back then, cripples like me were thoroughly, comprehensively, inalterably screwed.

Do you ever go to historical re-enactments? Do you ever notice that there are no cripples in historical re-enactments? That’s because whatever the period in history, the cripples were screwed. The only cripples people ever saw were blind beggars, village idiots and Helen Keller.

Seeing an FDR wheelchair gives me the intense willies the same way I used to get the willies when I was a kid and the disabled veterans called our house selling light bulbs. My mother could’ve bought light bulbs anywhere, but she waited for the disabled vets to call so she could order light bulbs and help a good cause at the same time. But it gave me the hard-boiled willies. Is that what cripples do when they grow up, I wondered, sell light bulbs over the phone? Is that the best we can hope for? And these were disabled veterans, too. These were the guys who saved us from the Nazis and the Communists. If all a grateful nation had to offer them was a chance to sell light bulbs over the telephone, then an ordinary cripple like me was invariably, inevitably, inescapably screwed.

I see an FDR wheelchair, and what grabs me is beyond the willies. It’s more like survivor guilt. I just barely escaped. Make me 15 years older and I would’ve been screwed like the cripples of yore. The bullets that took them down whizzed right past my head.

Survivor guilt can make it hard to have fun, if you’re not careful. You can get caught up in feeling like you’re disrespecting those who didn’t make it if you’re not perpetually somber, like a black-veiled widow. But I feel better when I do the opposite and get out there and have fun on behalf of the cripples of yore. I make it my business to have all the fun they weren’t allowed to have. It makes having fun twice the fun because I feel like I’m getting even.

Ask Smart Ass Cripple Yet Again?

2011-12-07T22:47:00.001-06:00

Dear Mister Smart Ass Cripple,

I am wondering if you're familiar with the song "Get Up, Stand Up" originally written by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. My question is- have you personally, ever taken offense to this song? Does any part of you feel that this song is anti-cripple in any way?

Sincerely,
Devoted Reader #721

Dear DR 721,

You wanna know what song I hate? I’ll tell you what song I hate! I HATE the song “Teddy Bear”, the super giant mega monster hit 1970s country song by Red Sovine!

“Teddy Bear” is barfsville from beginning to end! Sovine doesn’t sing, he talks out his wretched lyrics over a background of soft, plinky piano. It’s the story of a trucker who talks to a kid named Teddy Bear over the CB radio. The pitiful little Teddy Bear says:

"Now, I'm not supposed to bother you fellows out there
Mom says you're busy and for me to stay off the air.
But you see, I get lonely and it helps to talk
'Cause that's about all I can do, I'm crippled, and, I can't walk!"

I swear I’m not making this up! I wish with all my miserable being that it all was a sick joke and the song “Teddy Bear” never existed! Oh that we lived in such a benevolent universe!

And then Teddy Bear says his dad was a trucker who died in a wreck:

“Mom has to work now, to make ends meet
And I'm not much help, with my two crippled feet!"

The song deteriorates from there into a sucking cesspool of drivel. I’ll spare you the details. I fear I may have already exposed you to too much. You can look it up if you’re a fucking masochist.

I also hate any song sung by Barry Manilow. That guy sings like his nuts are crammed into a size two thong.

Dear Smart Ass Cripple,

What can I get you for Christmas?

Your smart ass fan,
Mrs. Santa

Dear Mrs. Santa,

You wanna know what you can get me for Christmas? I'll tell you what you can get me for Christmas! I need this machine that I don’t know the name of or if it even exists. But you put it in your closet and it humidifies or dehumidifies the air or whatever so your clothes don’t shrink. Because I just broke out my winter clothes and once again I found that they all shrank! Six month ago these clothes fit me just fine but now my shirts don’t button and my pants are too tight! This happens every damn year! So I figure there must be something unstable about the air in my closet that shrinks my clothes. Maybe the pH balance is all out of whack or something. What else could it be?

There must be a machine that can do something about that. Get me one and I’ll be your friend

Dear Smart Ass Cripple,

I’m so excited! Quadruple amputee Phillipe Croizon, who swam the English Channel in 2010, is at it again! In the spring, he plans to swim through a shark-infested, 12-mile crossing between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. He is the first quadruple amputee ever to attempt this feat!

Aren’t you excited?

Yours truly,
A Big Fan of Amputee Swimming

Dear Big Fan,

I hate to burst your bubble, but, technically, Phillipe Croizon is not the first quadruple amputee to swim these treacherous waters. A Belgian named Hugo van Sprout did it in 1996. Van Sprout had all his limbs when he jumped into the water in Papua New Guinea. But by the time the sharks got through with him, when he came ashore in Indonesia he was a quadruple amputee.

However, Phillipe Croizon may very well still make history for cripples. If the sharks are biting that day, he could be the first person to complete the swim as a quintuple amputee.

Blind Guys Driving

2011-12-02T17:19:00.000-06:00

When some people become crippled, either suddenly or gradually, for a long time they work hard to convince themselves they’re not really crippled. It’s hard to blame them for wanting no part of being crippled. They know all the terrible, hurtful names people call us. Doctors call us the worst names of all, names like “osteogenesis imperfecta.” Imperfecta? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is everybody else osteogenesis perfecta?

Cripples who are in this state of denial will do painful physical and emotional contortions to perform a simple activity, just to prove to themselves and to the world that they can still do it. And it’s usually a tedious activity that they hated doing before they were crippled, like mopping the kitchen floor. They should just hire a Polish cleaning lady and move on, but instead they’ll spend six hours mopping the kitchen floor, even if they have to rig up the mop to a custom-made helmet so they can push it with their head. When the task is complete, their satisfaction is as deep as their exhaustion. If they were really that crippled, they couldn’t mop the floor independently like that anymore, could they?

The activity cripples have the hardest time giving up is driving. I’m not one of those cripples. I never drove in the first place. I don’t worry about it because I happened to be married to my ideal woman, who’s beautiful and intelligent and witty and wise and has a driver’s license. But my friend Scott had a helluva time giving up driving. He’s dead now. He had juvenile diabetes. (There’s another one of those names--- juvenile diabetes. If your condition improves, do they upgrade you to sophomoric diabetes?) Scott started going blind right around the time he became old enough to drive. But he loved the hell out of driving and it got to the point where Scott would sit in his car along the roadside, wait for a bright-colored car to come by and follow it.

Well obviously Scott had to give that up. But a few years later on Scott’s birthday he told a friend who owned a pickup truck that for his birthday gift he wanted to drive his friend’s truck. Scott was totally blind by then so he had his friend drive out to this open field. There Scott could drive around and around with no danger of hitting anything. Out in the field, Scott and his friend switched seats. But Scott drove the truck into mud and it got stuck. So Scott’s friend got out and pushed while Scott floored the gas pedal. Just then a cop happened along and saw a guy out in the field pushing the back of a truck, its spinning tires spewing waves of mud. As the cop approached the truck, Scott’s friend jumped back. The tires kept angrily churning up mud. The cop knocked on the driver’s window. Thinking it was his friend knocking, Scott rolled down the window and snarled, “Get back there and push, ass hole!”

Sooner or later, trying to pretend you’re not crippled will get you in trouble. It’s better to just sign up with the imperfectas and get it over with.

My Mother the Smart Ass Enabler

2011-11-28T17:16:00.001-06:00

One afternoon at the state-operated boarding school for cripples, aka the Sam Houston Institute of Technology or SHIT, I was summoned by a teacher in a sober manner that suggested I was going to be sent to the principal’s office. But instead I was told to report to the office of the director of recreation.

I was nervous and baffled. What could I have said or done to get in trouble with the director of recreation? Up until now, she barely acknowledged my existence. If we passed in the halls she hustled by uncomfortably without breaking stride, may flipping me a quick hello wave.

But this time in her office, she greeted me with a warm, appreciative smile. She moved a chair so I could pull up next to her desk. She said she needed my help. “I’m going to a costume party and I’m going as Poland!” she said. Her costume would be like a sandwich board shaped like Poland. And she figured she could win first prize if she covered the sandwich board with Polish jokes. She heard through the SHIT grapevine, she said, that I knew more Polish jokes than any living human. Could I share with her my favorites? She braced, pen in hand, ready to scribble down whatever I said on a yellow legal pad.

So I hit her with a bunch of Polish jokes. I felt proud, like some 14-year-old joke guru. It’s pathetic, I know. But that was 40 years ago, when Polish jokes were considered to be funny. I didn’t say they were funny. I said they were considered to be funny. And besides, I had a severe case of Mad magazine poisoning, the result of exposure to toxic levels of Mad magazine. I’d do or say anything for a laugh.

It’s my mother’s fault. She was a smart ass enabler. Perhaps she saw in me the smart ass she could have been had she persevered and not gotten sidetracked. But she married young and had babies and all and pretty soon her opportunity to fully explore and develop her smart assiness was gone. Through me she was reliving the dream.

Case in point: Mom took me to a trick shop when I was about 10. I was giddy drunk with possibilities for pulling hilarious gags. But the prop I found most enchanting was the fake plastic hot dog. So my mother bought it for me and she agreed not to tell my sister. She even went along with my evil plan for her to serve hot dogs for dinner and to hold back my sister’s real hot dog and bring her at first the plastic hot dog in a real bun and covered with real mustard. As my sister prepared to take a bite, I swelled with such a burst of brilliance I was ready to explode. But then my sister looked at the hot dog with deep suspicion, pulled it out of the bun, set it on the table and pronounced it a fake.

I was so deflated that I flung the hot dog to the floor in humiliation.
But then, under the table, a seismic commotion! It was Mickey, our crazy-ass beagle that ate everything. Mickey ate Jell-o, sawdust, soap. He didn’t care. Mickey scrambled and pounced! He chewed and gnawed and scratched the fake hot dog, all in vain. He finally gave up, dejected and defeated.

Well at least I outsmarted our crazy-ass beagle! Redemption!

It’s pathetic, I know.

Feelin’ Like Hazmat Blues

2011-11-22T12:42:00.002-06:00

When my train arrives at the station, an ambulance will be waiting for me. And I’m feeling like hazmat again. I haven’t felt like that this bad in a long time, not since back in the Medi-car days.

All I need, when my train arrives, is a ride from the station to the university campus for my speaking gig and back. The people on campus arranging my trip had to hire an ambulance company to haul me. With no accessible taxis or anything like that in town, that was the best solution they could find for local wheelchair accessible transportation.

I wonder if it will be like that time I took the train to Syracuse and there was a van waiting for me there. It wasn’t an ambulance. It was a plain red van. But emblazoned across the side in big white letters it said INVALID COACH. I complained to the driver, but he said there was nothing he could do. He said all operators of wheelchair accessible vehicles were required by state law to have INVALID COACH written on their vehicles.

Back in the Medi-car days, like about 30 years ago, suppose you were a wheelchair cripple and you wanted to go get a haircut or something. You couldn’t use buses or trains or cabs so your only option might be to call a private Medi-car company. They all had embarrassing names like HANDICAB or INVABUS. And they had embarrassing vehicles with bright ambulacesque paint jobs that made it unmistakably clear that this was medical transportation. It was like they were trying to reassure a jittery populace that even though this cripple was leaving the house, he was doing so under the strictest medical supervision.

A trained EMT accompanied you to get your haircut. They made a simple ride into such a fucking production; it was like they were hauling hazmat. And forget about asking anybody on a date if you depended on Medi-cars to get around: “Hey baby, my EMT and I will pick you up at six in my INVABUS.”

And when the lifts on the Medi-cars went up and down there was always this shrill, staccato beep, warning all within earshot, I guess, of the extreme danger posed by a cripple going up and down on a lift. I knew a guy who got a new wheelchair that gave off that same warning beep whenever he backed up. (CRIPPLE BACKING UP! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!) And the people who sold him the wheelchair refused to disconnect the beeper. Liability. I don’t know what happened to that guy. I guess he goes around annoying the hell out of people every time he backs up, whether it’s in church or at a funeral or wherever.

Cripples are familiar with all this cautious overkill. When I lived in government-subsidized housing for cripples, in every bedroom and bathroom there was an emergency switch that looked like a light switch with a string hanging from it and when you pulled it down an alarm blared throughout the building. The problem was, 99 percent of the time when the switch got pulled down it was because someone’s cat was playing with it. But the building management wouldn’t disconnect it. Liability.

My train arrives. Waiting at the curb is an African American man wearing a blue windbreaker with a patch that says Prompt Ambulance Services. He escorts me to a plain white van that doesn’t even say INVALID COACH. Inside the van, tucked along the wall, is a three-foot sign with the same Prompt Ambulance insignia as on the patch. The driver explains that the sign is magnetic. He slaps it on the outside of the van when it’s a medical ride and peels it off when it’s a regular ride like me.

This is what 30 years of activism has gotten us. Discretion. Porno in a brown paper mailer.

Badass with a Bullhorn

2011-11-16T12:00:00.000-06:00

Everyone knows I’m a badass. I’ve got the bullhorns to prove it—not one but two! I got a bullhorn under my bed, a bullhorn in the back of my car. And there are usually some stained and battered all-purpose protest signs in the back of my car, with timeless messages like STOP THE MADNESS and HELL NO WE WON’T GO! I always carry around bullhorns and protest signs for the same reason some guys always carry around condoms: You never know when an opportunity will arise so always be prepared.

I’m such a badass, I’ve eaten more than one jailhouse bologna sandwich in my day. You don’t get one of those unless you’re such a badass protester that the police keep you in custody long enough to where they have to feed you. It’s a single slice of bologna smashed between two pieces of doughy white bread, maybe with a smear of mayo. The only places they serve bologna sandwiches like that are in the lockup and in sheltered workshops.

I’ve been arrested for disrupting meetings, occupying politicians’ offices, blocking streets. Yep, I’ve always told myself that the fascists better thank their lucky fascist asses that I was only about 10 years old when the people took to the streets in the 1960s. Because if I’d have been old enough, I’d have been out there leading the way, because obviously I was born to be a badass, and the fascists would have turned tail and run and there’d be no fascists anymore. And I’ve always told myself that if the people ever take to the streets like that again I’ll jump right in and lock arms with my brothers and sisters and march on to victory no matter what the cost because that’s what badasses do. They give it all up for the revolution!

And now here they are taking to the streets again. The Occupiers are just a few blocks away from my home in downtown Chicago. And I plan to dash right out there and lock arms with them and run the fascists out of town, as soon as spring comes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big time badass, but not when it’s so damn cold. I’m a thousand times more crippled in the winter because the more layers I have on the less I can move my body and I can’t move my body all that much to begin with so protesting in winter is out for me. And I can’t protest in the rain either because if my wheelchair gets too wet it shorts out and stops moving and then I’m screwed. So I’m pretty much limited to being a badass on warm and sunny days. But the next time the Occupiers hold a march on a warm and sunny day, I’ll be right there front and center with my badass self! That is as long I have no family stuff or anything like that going on. I would have been right there in the middle of that march the Occupiers had on that warm and sunny day a few weeks back, but my bad ass had a previous commitment. My sister-in-law was getting married in Philly.

It makes me wonder how I ever managed to balance being an active citizen with commitments to my community, my work and my family with being such an awesome badass. It’s getting harder and harder to do. When my badass friends and I decide we’ve had it up to here with the brutality of the fascist oligarchy and we’re going to commit an act of blatant defiance, we all pull out our date books:

Smart Ass Cripple: All right, let’s commit an act of blatant defiance against the fascist oligarchy next Thursday at noon.

Badass friend #1: Can’t do it on Thursday. I’ve got a dentist appointment.

Badass friend #2: Well cancel it. Don’t you hate the fascist oligarchy?

Badass friend #1: Of course I do! But this is a root canal. I can commit an act of blatant defiance on Wednesday.

Badass friend #2: Wednesday’s out. Jewish holiday. How about the 25th?

Smart Ass Cripple: Not the 25th! That’s my birthday.

Did Che Guevara and Fidel Castro have this problem?

Fidel: We shall launch the Cuban revolution on Sunday!

Che: Oh man, Sunday’s real bad. It’s my niece’s first holy communion. My wife’ll kill me if I blow it off. Let’s launch the revolution on Tuesday.

Fidel: Tuesday is my yoga day.

Che: Yoga? Are you serious, Fidel?

Fidel: Hey, don’t I deserve a little “me” time?

Maybe I’m not such a badass anymore. But I’m not throwing away my bullhorns and signs. I can feel it coming soon, the day when the masses finally rise up and overthrow the oppressors! And when that glorious day finally arrives, I hope it’s not raining.

Ringo the Pervert

2011-11-10T12:12:00.002-06:00

(Smart Ass Cripple alias alert: The names of the people and guide dogs have been changed in this otherwise true story.)

Ringo (Smart Ass Cripple alias) moved to New York to live with his new love, Shirley Temple (Smart Ass Cripple alias). They rented a room in a three-story Victorian house in a suburb north of the Bronx. There they lived a warm and cozy life, along with Shirley Temple’s guide dog, Ayn Rand (Smart Ass Cripple dog alias).

Ringo worked the graveyard shift. And one morning after he got off work, he met Shirley Temple at Grand Central Station. He was unshowered, unshaven, unkempt, clad in his ragged work clothes. But in a few days, Shirley Temple was to begin a semester of classes on Long Island. Being blind, it was necessary for Shirley Temple to first take Ayn Rand on a dry run to campus and back on public transit so the dog could learn the route. Ringo’s job was to follow silently behind and be their eyes, only intervening if they were making a wrong turn or boarding a wrong train or doing something majorly screwy like that. Shirley Temple called this shadowing. Ringo had never shadowed for Shirley Temple before, but how hard could it be?

The problem was, when Shirley Temple tried to march Ayn Rand forward to the train, leaving Ringo a few yards behind, Ayn Rand halted. She was waiting for her buddy Ringo to come along too. Ayn Rand didn’t know any better. She was just a dumb animal. So Ringo turned and walked a few steps away, pretending to be leaving. When Ringo looked back and saw Ayn Rand leading Shirley Temple onto a subway car, he quickly ran back and jumped on the car behind, so as to remain undetected by the dog. He pushed through the packed car and up to the window so he could continue to keep an eye on Shirley Temple in the next car.

It just so happened that Ringo had boarded the only car with a conductor on board. The conductor was a bald and menacing man, built like a linebacker. He glowered at Ringo. Ringo suddenly realized what this must look like, a disheveled man staring through the window at a poor young blind woman in the next car, like some pervert. But there was no time to explain. Shirley Temple got off the train at the next stop. So Ringo ran off the train and he hid behind a post so Ayn Rand wouldn’t see him. But then, confused, Shirley Temple got back on the train! So Ringo ran back on! But Shirley Temple exited again! So Ringo ran off again! He hid behind a post!

The conductor stopped the train. “Why you following the girl?” he boomed, in a tone befitting a linebacker.

“Shhhh. I’m shadowing her,” Ringo said. And then he grimaced when he realized how that sounded.

“You stay right there!” the conductor bellowed. He waved his arm. Two NYPD came running. But the oblivious Shirley Temple was almost up the stairs. Ringo couldn’t let her get away! Ringo ran after her! But then from behind he heard “You in the red jacket! STOP!” So Ringo stopped. He didn’t want to be tasered, or shot in the back. Ringo called out to Shirley Temple. “Waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”

But an Asian woman grabbed Shirley Temple’s arm and dragged her and Ayn Rand toward the turnstile.

NYPD grabbed Ringo and wrestled him down. “Waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”
Shirley Temple heard Ringo’s SOS. She broke free from the Asian woman. Shirley Temple came down the stairs. She straightened everything out with NYPD and they let Ringo go.

After that Ringo had to sit for a bit and catch his breath. Shirley Temple told him the moral of the story was to never ever piss her off. Because if he does, the next time this happens, she might just tell NYPD she doesn’t know him.

Crippled in the Eyes of the State

2011-11-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

Every year around this time, the state of Illinois sends someone to my home to make sure I’m still crippled. The state pays the wages of the guys I hire to get me out of bed, put me on the crapper etc., so the state needs to know that I’m still crippled.

So the cripple inspector asks me a bunch of routine questions and I sign a bunch of papers and for another year I am deemed to be officially crippled in the eyes of the state. There is of course a much simpler test the inspectors could administer to determine if I’m still crippled and it saves a lot of time and money. They could just take my pulse. If I’m still alive, I’m still crippled. And the state can rest assured that if something ever happens to suddenly render me not crippled anyone, they will for sure hear about it. There’s no way in hell that if one day I wake up not crippled I’ll hush it all up and sit around the house pretending to still be crippled. I’ll cash in big time right away on my new uncrippled status. It’s a fucking goldmine. I’ll get an agent to book me on a world tour as the guy who spent more than 50 years crippled but now all of a sudden isn’t. I’ll land a zillion-dollar book deal!

The last time the inspector came, she snuck in a question that took me by surprise. She asked me to spell the word “world” backward. I hesitated because she came out of the blue with that one. But then I spelled world backward. She wrote something down and she moved on to the next question. But I couldn’t leave it at that. After I signed all the papers, I asked her why she asked me to spell world backward. She shrugged. She said it’s just something someone somewhere added to the requirements for meeting the burden of proof that we’re still crippled.

I must’ve passed the test because I haven’t received a letter from the state informing me that I’m not crippled. But I still couldn’t leave it at that. There was something deeply sinister about the innocence of that question. It seemed like a trap, like those Rorschach blots. They look like a butterfly or a clown, but they’re so intimidating because you feel like if you interpret them wrong and say the wrong thing, it will give the shrink an excuse to lock you up.

So why really was the state requiring me to spell world backward? Needing a source of infallible, irrefutable information, I turned to the Internet. I learned that spelling world backward is a cognitive function test. It allows the examiner to tap into your cortex, which is the area largely responsible for higher brain functions, such as reasoning, sensations and memory.

I felt violated. Why was the state snooping around in my cortex? That seems like the kind of thing a state ought not to be allowed to do without a warrant. It creeped me out to think that the state could now be privy to all my sensations. And what about my memories? Did they discover any of the stuff in my past that I’m not proud of and I don’t want anybody to know about, such as the time I got my mom’s French poodle stoned? My mom went away and I had a party and one of the stoners who came over said you can get a dog stoned by blowing smoke in its ear. I should have known better than to tell a stoner they’re full of shit when they claim something like that, because you know damn well they’ll try to prove it. So he lifted the poodle’s ear and blew smoke. And the dog got a paranoid look on its face and it wouldn’t leave my side. And then it slept for about 12 hours.

And what do the inspectors do with all they gather from having me spell world backward? I picture them all drunk on eggnog at the Department of Human Service office Christmas party, entertaining everyone with tales of the sick and twisted shit they discovered while ransacking my cortex.

Next time the inspector comes around, I might just refuse to spell world backward. I’ll slam the door to my cortex! But they might use that as an excuse to say I’m not crippled anymore and cut me off. And then I’d be screwed. This is the kind of stuff you have to submit to when you need someone to put you on the crapper.