You're Disabled - NO! I'm Not! Nyuh-huh! Uh-uh! Nyuh-hah, too!

Its a pretty conundrum we clubbies have - we aren't really "disabled," right? Unless we are. I'm having a bad day. I don't know if you can tell - cyberspace is pretty poor at expressing emotions, emoticons notwithstanding. And it's also a place where anything you say can be held against you in the court of public, er, opinion? Or, perhaps, attitude explosion? Yeah, that's it.

We were most of us I'd venture to guess raised to "keep the secret," about being disabled - after all, the doctors, and by proxy, our parents, assured us we were "just like anybody else." Sweet. But then one day we wake up and our feet scream at us, Whoa, there, just a minute, not so fast - you ain't steppin' on ME today, bub! And that's the beginning of doubt, the start of a small but irritating picture in our minds that, well, we been flim-flammed on the jim-jam, as some famous cartoon figure of the distant past used to say. But we won't use that word, nosiree! Not on your life. 'Cuz we're just like everybody else, yep, no doubt, none at all. Uh-uh.

Yeeaahhhhh, wrong. Sorry to break it to me and you like this, but we are - disabled, that is. Doesn't mean we can't do as much as we are willing to try to do, but we just don't have the same range, the same endurance, the same absence of pain that all those "normal" people do. We are "differently-abled," if that makes you better able to stomach this major change of focus. But the sooner we come to terms with this, the better we will be at doing what we need to do.

I got my wake up call on this issue a few years back. I was working on a certificate in training and human resource development, and in one of my classes, the instructor invited each student to run their own five-minute training for the rest of the class. One man began by having the class stand along one side of the room. He then would ask everyone to respond to various types of self-identified groups we all might consider ourselves part of. As he would announce a specific group, or affiliation, people who so identified would go to the other side of the room. It got to where there were only three people on the original side, and I was one of them. the other two finally responded to something or other, leaving only me. Not unlike being the last one to be picked for a team in baseball when neither wants you.

And then he said, "disabled, or handicapped."  At first, I didn't really hear the words. But suddenly, it was like a big hand pushed me from behind, and I stumbled forward. I must have looked pretty shocked, because the instructor suddenly came toward me, and then, I fainted. Yep. No kidding. I have never fainted in my life, not before, nor since.

It has taken me many years, now, to process this event, as well as this acknowledgment of my situation. I believe I was so adamant that I was "normal," or not disabled, that I was simply not prepared to deal with the response my body had to that word, that idea. Even today, I fight against the concept, firmly believing I can, should be able to do whatever I want to do. Which, by now, you'd think I was too intelligent to be so self-deluded. Apparently not.

Today I was in a great deal of pain. Every step was an effort. I couldn't take the dogs for their walk, which made them cynical and deeply disappointed, and, well, mainly concerned. They aren't cynical, sorry, but I sure as hell am. And it occurs once more that this cynicism is built on a foundation of denial of my true situation. If I am NOT disabled, then this pain is a failure of what - my will? My manhood? My belief in this long-held and well-cemented lie? Yep. that one will do. I am in pain because my feet just don't have the strength to deal with relatively mild, and by most people's estimation, normal demands of getting through one's day. So, I get in a pissy mood, or go in for some really rock-em-sock-em self-abuse, and get to feel even worse. Oh, lucky me.

But this afternoon, at the height of my miserable, rotten day, I went to an event, as part of my job, actually, that really punched me in the nose. It was held at the main branch of the library, in their big auditorium. It was The 2010 Superfest International Disability Film Festival. Now, I was there because I needed to interview someone about, well, I just needed to interview this person, can't really go into specifics, sorry. But there I was, surrounded by a flash from my past, just like the orthopedic clinic I attended throughout my childhood. Wheelchairs, walkers, prosthetic limbs, the works. Disabled people being proud of themselves as people first, disability second, while never once denying who they were, and the nature of their situation on this planet. And me. Mr. Not Disabled. With a cane. And a limp. And two screaming puppies hollering to sit down right now, dammit! Oh what fools these mortals be!


If you are born without an arm, lets say, there is never a moment where someone tells you, hey, guess what, you are NORMAL. Or with dwarfism, or Down's Syndrome. But clubbies? Hell, normal as an Iowa cornfield. Right? Man, I could just slap myself sometimes. Wake up, fella, that little voice of rationality and logic screams. And I just go walking along, in pain, and supremely in denial. But these films, they offered a portrait of life with disabilities, and great, sometimes insurmountable difficulty, and the people so affected, bless everyone of them, just keep on bulling through all the obstacles, even if it means getting their heads bruised in the process. Because, while they might be disabled, they are first and foremost free, autonomous human beings who have as much aspiration and desire as any so-called "normal" person. Which, if you think about it, makes them all, well, normal.


Truth? 

I am freakin' disabled. Get over it. And get on with it.