Tonight, I was getting take-out from a barbeque place on King Street (yeah, I'm cheating on my one true love the cheeseburger). I passed two guys and one of them said, "Crippled bitch!" as I passed. It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I whirled around and said, "Excuse me?" but he and his unfortunate friend were already gone.
I should have been laughing hysterically and praying for his enlightenment, but instead, my silly little brain thought, "But you don't even know me! I could be an exceedingly nice cripple!" And then my traitorous tear ducts couldn't help themselves, and I was crying in the middle of the street.
What I cannot believe, beyond the fact that I successfully fought the urge to beat this boy to death with his own shoes, is that i heard what he said, processed it, and then only objected to the last of that phrase. Sure, the word cripple is so ugly and bent that I can barely stand to type it. But it's not untrue.
I am "disabled." A "cripple." A "handicap." I am "special," "spastic," and "not right." I actually rode the "short bus" to school for six months of my life. I put all this in quotes because not one of these expressions apply to me or the life I actually live. But neither do the socially and medically accepted phrases "cerebral palsy," "quadriplegia" or "brain injured."
I was born three and a half months early and could not breathe on my own for many months. The resulting neurological damage left me without the ability to walk unassisted, and pesky muscle spasticity in my arms and legs. What this means: I do not walk. But I am not paralyzed. I can swim, drive a car, open doors, and have lots of dirty sex if I so desire--these may not seem like revelatory acts but most people doubt my ability to do any one of them.
Why am I talking about this now? Because online I don't have to be anything other than Taylor, the Beatle-obsessed southern girl who's always looking for a snack and a man in skinny jeans. I don't have to talk about anything other than my perpetually un-updated fic, and my obsession with Gale Harold's soccer boy build.
And usually, that is a-ok by me. Because ironically, advocacy is not my bag. I prefer to be a moderately selfish being who interacts with disability on a minimal basis. Because isn't the point of equality that I should get to *live* life rather than yakking about just how I do it?
Nope. That's not the point at all. Just because I treat my disability as incidentally as I do my eye color, doesn't mean that's what it is. Unfortunately, as I get older, it gets more difficult to figure out just how I should handle it. I don't want to harp on it. I don't want to be bitter. And I don't wanna cry in the street every time a silly man-child in a pink t-shirt says a bigoted thing.
I should be proud that he called me a crippled bitch. Cause for my whole life I've been fighting preconceived notions that all disabled people are exactly the same: blind, deaf, dumb and in need of pity and prayer. Along with those knee jerk prejudices, there is the notion that we are all good. Saintly. God's own "special folk" who do not curse, drink, or skip classes.
I will admit those misconceptions have helped me out once or twice, but they are designed to limit us, me, in the same way the word cripple (insert other perjorative racial/ethnic/sexual slurs here) does. I want to be more than that. I want to be a wife. A mother. A writer. A lawyer. A woman. A poet. A cook. A sister. A friend. A Beatle wife (wait...). I can't be all that if I'm only seen as cripple, a tiny twisted sliver of self. So I should be proud that he saw something in my face, my eyes, my hairdo (piled on top of my head and secured with a red pencil at the moment) that warranted more than one adjective.
I want disabled people, actually
all people, to get to be whatever in the world they aspire to be, and that includes the bad stuff. A small example: When I'm watching TV, I want the disabled murder suspect to have to have an alibi beyond "being in a wheelchair" (
Bones, I'm looking at you. Y'all can do better than that.) Does that make any sense? If it doesn't, let me rephrase.
I want to live in a world of three dimensional people, all of them in brilliant technicolor, equal parts fucked up and spectacular. Anybody with me?
*term inspired by this exchange from Once Upon a Time in Mexico:
Sands: Are you a MexiCan or a MexiCan't?
EL: I'm a MexiCan.
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