Worthless Goddamned Cripple

Read Part 1
While staying at the warehouse, I phoned a paratransit company licensed by the city and scheduled a ride to my bank. As the female driver strapped my wheelchair to the floor of the van I noticed a small portable black and white television stationed on the driver’s side of the dashboard. I assumed that during her breaks she parked in a lot somewhere and stared at mindless shows. She glanced at the schedule attached to a clipboard while she absently grabbed my fare. No sooner had she merged into traffic than she switched on the TV; it was tuned to a soap opera.

Three minutes into the journey she complained that she hadn’t eaten breakfast. While the TV blared, the van jerked to a halt in front of a McDonald’s or as she familiarly called the popular fast food chain, Mickey D’s. more »

Back when I almost languished in the warehouse, paratransit companies expected their drivers to follow stringent rules when serving the infirm and disabled—at least that’s what they wanted everybody to believe. (This may have changed, but I doubt it.) The reality of high employee turnover for an underpaid and largely unskilled position (though many unsophisticated drivers insisted otherwise) forced urban paratransit companies to shitcan reasonable standards when hiring workers.*

Cripplevan companies trained their drivers to assist elderly customers as they shuffled up or down the van’s ramp, and to always back wheelchairs in or out of the vehicle—never to push except on level ground. A driver who followed proper procedure used heavy nylon straps to secure the wheelchair to the van’s floor, then fastened a seat belt around the passenger. (I remember once when I reached for the safety strap; the driver ordered me not to move, to let him do it because “I be a trained p’ofessional.”) more »

Cripples and retards are not worthy of respect solely by virtue of their deficit(s). They can be just as amazingly stupid, petty, and annoying as able-bodied and sound-minded members of society. For example, gimps acknowledge a silly hierarchy among themselves: A person born disabled enjoys a higher position on the gimp totem pole than a person fucked up by illness or injury. Christopher Reeve’s antics left the self-righteous in-crips reeling with indignity. more »

Mr. Foley had arrived at the warehouse dependent on an oversized wheelchair. After many weeks of therapy he found himself able to slowly lumber while leaning on a cane. The simple-minded therapists and staff didn’t pay the gargantuan Mr. Foley much attention when he used the chair, but eagerly allowed themselves to be charmed by his dumbed-down sardonic-with-a-heart-of-gold personality when they noticed him walking. I often speculated that Mr. Foley’s brains were in his ass, though that would’ve certified him a genius.

When the administration discharged one of my roommates and I learned that they had dumped Mr. Foley into the bed next to mine, I briefly relaxed—relaxation at the warehouse always wound up marginal and short-lived. more »

My pre-warehouse roommates had always maintained their own area in our shared dwelling. They regularly used soap and for the most part knew when to make themselves scarce. But while I vacationed at the warehouse, the administration almost always assigned an unwashed and inconsiderate dimwit to the bed only two-and-a-half feet away from mine. The staff and the other residents considered me an uppity asshole because I chose to draw the privacy curtain hanging from the ceiling around my bed, thus defining a personal cubbyhole.* And I’d demonstrated the habit of rejecting the staff’s minor-league bullshit instead of cowering and blindly accepting anything thrown my way.

While I enjoyed a welcomed but way too brief period without a roommate, a guy in his early fifties strolled into my room. more »

A clumsy and unsophisticated nine-year-old controlled Josh’s gnarled body though he biologically approached middle age. I had only seen Josh from afar and, based on his diminutive frame and immature behavior regarded him as a vaguely simple-minded young adult. His spasmodic pigeon-toed gait and palsied gestures advertised his physical condition before he opened his mouth. We met when he moved into my room. Up close, his weathered face revealed his age. I also realized that he smelt funny and wore an elastic band around his head to keep his generic black glasses in place, just like the pussy kid in your grade school. He immediately started jabbering, tried to introduce himself. I guess he got sick of my repeatedly begging his pardon, so he finally used a twisted finger to point to the nametag on a pair of his briefs. more »

Immediately after I entered the hospital, my doctors spewed their quarter-assed diagnosis at my parents who passed it along to my grandmother. She (like most people) regarded the conclusions drawn by white male doctors beyond reproach. News of their—and in fact everyone’s—irresponsible speculation prompted her to write a letter to me, her ill-bred wicked grandson. In it she expressed her hope that enduring this stroke fiasco would somehow “save” me. The correspondence caught me off guard because though she counted herself as a devout Catholic, she had never impressed me as a woman inclined to use what amounted to a popular catchphrase.

* * *After I’d emerged from the coma, I remember lying on some sort of stationary gurney in the ICU of an urban hospital. more »

The security people who worked at the warehouse established themselves as two-bit blundering oafs whose previous employers never entrusted them with any genuine responsibility—imagine a small handful of lobotomized Mr. T’s who formerly blew leaves. They wallowed in impotent authority by bullying and browbeating clearly innocuous residents, visitors, and medivan drivers.

I don’t mean the residents Mr. Gold had stationed behind a table in the lobby. The handpicked batshit fossil on duty would motion to a guestbook while politely but sternly ordering residents and visitors to sign in or out. Mr. Gold and an array of visiting psychiatrists had stressed the importance of this “job” to appointed residents and reminded them that people at their age needed to keep busy. more »

The warehouse administration strove to methodically whittle away a resident’s peripheral reality and impose a manageable illusion of reality for the purpose of nurturing dependence and therefore obedience. Though the administration cultivated a high profile, for all practical purposes the flying monkey CNA’s ran the show.

The majority of certified nursing assistants employed by the warehouse were mouth-breathing soap-free scuzzbuckets who didn’t know shit from apple butter (though they had memorized the protocols of visiting incarcerated boyfriends and relatives). Occasionally some chirpy twat determined to save the world managed to slip through. more »

Over-educated liberals who trip over themselves to exhibit political correctness while disregarding reality routinely challenge victim blaming. Ironically, alleged victims are often anxious to find fault with those weaker than themselves, particularly the elderly or infirm—kind of like a linebacker beating up a six-year-old.

Many shitworkers at major urban medical facilities take disproportionate pride in their menial positions. These nano-wits delude themselves that a job requiring a white uniform and the use of bona fide medical gadgets must also demand extraordinary skill, and magically transform them into a “medical professional” worthy of awe and respect. Legions of these simple oafs infested the rehab hospital. more »