They seem to be coming out of the woodwork
First it was the ignorant professor who decided that fat people don’t posses the discipline to become Phd’s. WTF?
(That’s right up there with the Cleveland Clinic’s decision to deny desk jobs to applicants with a high BMI)
Then there’s Bill Maher. Evidently he’s not a comic or a television host anymore. Just an A***ole with a target audience and a market share who figures it’s just fine to call Trig Palin a ‘retard.’ I may disagree with Trig’s Mom’s politics, but not about dignity for Trig.
And in a more serious vein.
I only recently became aware of the story of Alex Spourdalakis, the teen with autism whose cargiver had been offered help, but turned it down…and then decided to plan her son’s murder.
When stories like this come up, with all the sympathy for the caregiver….it’s just as clear as a bell…the moment that PWD’s become difficult to care for or costly to care for….it is never outside the realm of possibility that some unbalanced person with authority over you will make you go away. That’s sickening and terrifying in any language.
What *is* it that makbes able people decide to dismiss, target or even destroy people different from them? It surely doesn’t make them any better…
In the “That has to be the most singularly unhelpful thing I’ve heard” category.
Persons with disabilities (henceforth abbreviated PWD’s) get really dumb stuff said to them by the able all the time. But this one takes it.
An associate of mine was struggling with life responses that they themselves were suffering by (in other words their own choices), but also dealing with a bunch of stuff that wasn’t their fault. An able bodied spectator of their life’s drama said, and I quote:
“You know I really don’t understand why you don’t just shoot yourself in the head.”
That, of course, is the ugliest version of “I could never live like that.” or “I’m not good with sick people,” etc.
Deep breath:
First shut your mouth unless your actual intent when you got up this morning was to devalue and terrify an associate of mine.
Second: And I’ll say this slowly so that any able bodied slowcoach who says these sorts of things can clean out their ears or take some hangover remedy and listen.
Yes, you could live like that. Yes…you could. Admitting “I’m scared of living like that,” now that’s more like it and we can begin a dialogue there. How many of our veterans are dealing with PTSD or TBI? Or How many car accidents cause radical alterations in the way those injured in them have to manage their lives?
A just as flip, unhelpful nasty answer to the “shoot yourself in the head,” remark, might be a slow smile and a “You first…:).” [In my days of newsgroup flamewarring I might have said just such a thing...] But a better answer is “Because I still have stuff to do.”
Yeah, it’ll get done by methods and ways that some able can’t begin to think about…but it’ll get done.
Thirdly, there are folks who at one time or another have real, searing suicidal ideation. Do you with that earnest statement (it wasn’t a joke, I was there) want to encourage their own vulnerability and fear about what they are experiencing? Don’t put a thumb on the scale unless you’re really fine with learning a particular friend checked out early. Because I know I’m not.
And the, “I’m not good with sick people,” thing is just a cowards way out, frankly. Let’s say you have a friend. And they are going through things that make you sad, or angry or frightened. You don’t have to get in there and ‘suffer’ with them 24/7 because they’d just as much rather hear about the news, or pop culture, or family stuff or gardening, in balance with being able to air what’s going on with them.
It’s difficult certainly but it beats leaving the party early.
My brain doesn’t walk lockstep
with leftward politicians or presidents, so I say regarding the AP leaks: Holder has to go.
…and I say about the IRS…this is about the most shameful stupid move any taxing agency could make.
Dear current administration: Please stop with the incompetence or you will open the door to crazy all over again.
Thank God I have a land line
so I can call customer service at my cable company to make a payment, etc.
Because this smartphone I was forced into buying by charger death and replacement obsolesence is just hell.
I cannot handle phone trees any longer because my phone screen goes away after thirty seconds.
Sights and sounds
Well first, it was 1963 or 4 and I was needing to stand up. Our 1960′s era black and white Magnavox console obliged. It didn’t look exactly like this, but close enough…a long box with wooden exterior and components inside, stereo receiver for music, or home Browns games, turntable for the occasional LP and a large black and white TV screen in the middle. It started out as assistive tech…I’d rather stand with it, sometimes, than my canes….then the sitting down in front (too close) to be scared to death by “The Outer Limits” or laugh my head off at “Bewitched” or “Batman”
The TV tuner eventually became something that needed a lot of babying, inching to the correct place to land the channel, but just a shade too far and you’d have to restart the process. I remember that my father became too impatient to take the time to cajole the machine into changing channels properly, and he’d ask me to work with it. Apparently I had “the gift” with that particular piece of machinery. If they wanted some music, my parents would send Nat King Cole, or Henry Mancini, and later the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel through the house.
After our first color TV arrived in 1972 that console was demoted to my long empty bedroom closet, so I’d have a TV to watch or at least a turntable to listen to.
The television lasted until at least 1974, and possibly later…I remember watching cartoons in black and white in the 1970′s on that screen.
The turntable portion lasted considerably longer, til the 1980′s because I remember my boyfriend listening to movie soundtrack albums on it in 1985 and 1986 (It had been moved again to the guest bedroom when there was no longer any room in a teenage girls closet for clothes….)
One Christmas in the late 70′s we were spending the holiday at an uncle’s home…and one card held particular interest….because an elegant stereo system was waiting at home…speakers that came to the knees, a blue lit stereo receiver, and a turntable with a sturdy clear cover. It looked something like this . I listened hard to music from that system through the rest of high school, college and about half my marriage, reluctantly giving it up for something more compact in 1991.
Why did I write about it? Because in these days when you don’t need to store your music, television or movies in a three dimensional way sometimes I miss the part when you had to assign space in your house to three dimensional entertainment players that made you smile, and couldn’t possibly give you carpal tunnel.
