Bank On It
Went to the bank…made a 25.00 deposit… rolled across the parking lot to the store…had to buy stuff anyway, was (internally) panicked about the card, paid for groceries by ck, pulled over, painstakingly went through the purse. No card no how. Big sigh…could have dropped it in the bank parking lot or the store aisles…realized that even though a transaction is set to automatically debit today using the card number (not the check # ) “I just have to freeze that card…” rolled back across the parking lot to the bank (and darnit I was just beginning to cry by then) The teller I had seen said said, “Oh, Jean!” and came around the teller wall and handed me the card. I had left it there. Thank you Bank People.
It makes me think about the fact that this happens to everybody. Able or not. Everyone loses cards, keys, the really vital stuff. Since I can leave the apartment and zoom around at this shopping place that is two minutes roll instead of the nearly completely homebound state I was in my last two years living in Denver, I’m having more experiences common to both people with disabilities and the able bodied…
Why my blog handle imfunny2 is what it is…
I’m on crutches, or my wheelchair, a heavyset gimpy broad going to work a long while ago, when I still could. I was an entry level “adjuster” at a health insurance co, but also a person with a masters degree. I always seemed to land in an elevator while the top brass were discussing some (non secret, not necessarily too evil) business process…and so naturally I’d chime in with some ideas of my own.
Invariably, they’d give me the “Who the f**k is this disabled woman and why is she talking?,” look.
Some might say “Oh, really?” with a vacant smile that meant the same thing…
After about six of these run ins, I couldn’t stand it. Gave my idea, got the WTF look and said in (what was, quite frankly, an arrogant Cleopatra-to-an-unruly-pesant sort of tone):
“Not only can I talk…But I’m *funny* too!”
Naturally, there was dead silence in that elevator until I reached my floor.
This is one of those times….
When I wish my husband was still alive. No, not in a mournful funerary sort of way…
But see, he loved to drive. Anywhere. Anytime. for any reason or no reason…and we lived in Ohio. Which is, as it turns out, just north of Kentucky.
If my quick tempered spouse had seen the original Maddow interview and this most recent expansion by Mr. Rand Paul about what’s wrong with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I’ve no doubt that he would have driven down there. Alone or with me. And asked, very politely to see Mr. Paul, because my spouse had the conservative cred of being an evangelical pastor.
Then, when he was in Mr. Paul’s presence….A rant known more for it’s volatility than it’s precision, but nontheless correct would have occurred.
And I would also wish for a tape recorder or a video capture….. 🙂
The Summer of ’67.
I’m six about-to-be-seven. It’s some afternoon in the summer. Two teenaged guys in sunglasses and short haircuts are driving a Thunderbird convertible down the street (or so I thought. I don’t know **** about cars now, and even less then…) When they weren’t driving it, they just did that polish it up and lean against it thing…
I thought it was the coolest thing ever…that Christmas I was happy to find a dark purple T-Bird to add to my toy car collection. ( I had Barbie *and* Hot Wheels. Go figure.)
I adored my uncle’s copper colored Mustang hardtop, but I liked the T’bird just a shade more…
Sun’s out, and our new porch fence and railing prove just two tempting. I’ve been eyeing them, and the bottom slats look like I could pull myself up on them, and hold the top…to be taller….and make a speech. Somehow, making a speech was something I’d never done. The parents had discovered that I had a singing voice at age four, and forced me to sing ‘Hello Dolly’ at family gatherings….but that was being *made* to take the stage…not just showing up and blathering of my own accord, which seemed like it ought to be more fun.
I don’t remember much of the content, but I do know I loudly announced my full name, age, and street adress to the sunny day and everyone in it. I was going on to some complicated list of my likes and dislikes when I was requested to cease and desist and come inside. Since I couldn’t outrun my mom, compliance was the only choice.
Maybe she should have just *let* me make that speech…I could have gotten it out of my system then….rather than now…
Some November 8’s
It’s November 8th 1961.
Two early twenty somethings head to the hospital about three months early…the child was born prematurely and dropped from 3 lbs 2 oz to 2 lbs 11 oz, before she decided to stick around.
Objectively, without the *huge* amount of baggage I carry around about them, I honestly feel sorry for those young people. My father was a jock who used to carry me on his forearm, my head cushioned in his palm and show me off to the fraternity brothers…
My mother was this super math brain who was going places, and then at 20, suddenly had to use her weekends to travel to and from the campus to the hospital where I was for two months, before I could come home, through blizzards etc etc.
And, study.
And get amazing grades.
And put up with my father’s partying, which I imagine he had begun to overdo even then, before the real hard drinking set in.
How did they do it? I don’t know what I would have done.
I didn’t show signs of “disability” after the incubator except for my lazy eye for a good while, so I was a regular baby…
it was just when I didn’t start walking, much later that they got nervous.
I wish they were alive (or in my mom’s case, more normally communicative, as illness means she hasn’t really spoken to me face to face since 2004.), so I could ask them how they did it. Finished school, went to grad and law school and raised me to a five year old while doing it, and got hit with the disability diagnosis when I was four….
Or maybe it’s November 8th 1979…
I’m student directing a non-musical version of “Sweeney Todd…” (Why they make these rather lame, non-musical versions of musicals is beyond me, but I was so happy to be involved, I didn’t give a ****.)
A frenemy, the guy I would eventually go to prom with did a nice thing and asked me to go to dinner on my birthday. (With the panicked “You *know* this isn’t an actual *date* right?,” look that all my able guy friends gave me ] and some *still* give me, heh,] when they ask me to get together for dinner, or drinks, or a film. I knew. I Knew. Jesus, did I know… I felt like I had “Funny, Smart, great Friend, but Never Bother Dating!” tattooed on my forhead..)
But I digress.
So, the frenemy has asked me out to The Mad Greek, my favorite place in Cleveland Heights for Greek food, and after the evening’s rehearsal we were heading over there…
Except that I think we had to go to Houlihan’s instead…I’m not sure…
We get there…and it’s not a table for two at all, and I was a bit bummed…there were all these people…
…that I knew! My best friends *and* much of my cast…jumpped up and yelled “Surprise!”
And, the shock of it made me laugh and fall down…directly…
Thanks Pete,Mel,Tammy,Loren, Debi,the others that I forgot, and even the frenemy Alec….
Thanks to all.
Or, maybe it’s November 7th 1981, when I had just finished my run as an actress that I’ve blogged about before…we were all required to do the physical work of striking the set, and we could not leave until it was done…I begged for an exemption about two hours into it, because I was exhausted, but moreso because my grandparents had flown in from South Carolina (!) to see me, and the rest of both sides of my family came out in force to see me kick some theatrical ass…and I wanted to thank them…
So the tech director let me go and I fled back to where they were all waiting, all those people…I hugged and cried and said thank you far too quickly…but the fact that they had come meant so much that my throat closed up and I cried…
I went *back* finished some striking, and *then* we were all invited to the directors house for wine and pizza….
And after midnight, when it was officially November 8th, somebody remembered, and everybody sang at me while I was veering toward a slight wine buzz…
Thanks to Marian, Don, Susan, Neil, Barbara, Jim, Paula David, (family) and the others I forget
Bob, Tom, Julie, Mark,Kim,Jim,Andi,Nancy,the guy who played my kid, Chuck, and anyone else who was there.
Yeah, those were some of my best birthdays…
Today is quieter…the real celebration will be this weekend…
Chinese food, a bit of writing, sending thankyou emails…
Yep, I am surely a November child…windy and cloudy and full of transition…
That’s me.
Midlife And Treachery 
