Response to Gary and all other "angry crips"

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What special rules for survival do you habitually follow as a person living with a disability?

Name: Ellie
Email: eomans@optonline.net
Date: 05 Jan 2001
Time: 15:12:36

Story

A couple of weeks ago, I was at my occupational therapist's office waiting for my exciting session of inserting small pegs into a pegboard to begin (sometimes I even get to string paper clips together). Since I had some time to kill, I was reading the latest issue of the Mouth. When the occupational therapist finally got around to beginning our session, she asked what I was reading. I started gushing about the Mouth and how wonderful it is. I even gave her a copy to read, expecting her to absolutely LOVE it. At my next therapy session I asked my OT what she thought of the Mouth. She said, "Kind of negative and angry isn't it?" After pausing momentarily to adjust my jaw, which had dropped open, and to keep from foaming at the mouth, I said, "Well, somebody has to get their attention!"

Wouldn't you expect a person who works with all manner of crips to be: a) if not involved in, then at least supportive of, the Disability Rights movement; b) a little more empathetic since one of the reasons I receive occupational therapy is because, as my MS progresses, what little independence I have is not only being steadily eroded but also booby-trapped in what seems to be every possible way out in the world at large and since all crips experience similar obstacles -- don't we have the right to be even a little pissed-off; and c) not feel threatened by or uncomfortable with an angry cripple. She freely chose to become an occupational/physical therapist after all! Did she think we'd all be members of the "sunshine and smiles" and "bravely accept your lot in life without complaint" club? Now I'm probably labeled "non-compliant" in some vast medical database somewhere.

Someone once said to me, "There's nothing worse than an angry cripple." Never mind that this statement is patently untrue. I can think of lots of people, places and things worse than an angry cripple. But anyway, is this a pernicious stereotype or what? Does our anger make the able-bodied that uncomfortable? Perhaps the knowledge that they have done little or nothing (except avert their eyes if one of us happens to pass through even their peripheral vision) to support or implement the ADA makes them feel complicit (which they ARE) in the discrimination I'm sure all we crips have experienced. And so what if we are angry? Isn't anger sometimes a normal, justifiable reaction when life throws you curveball? Would the Nineteenth Amendment (finally passed in 1920 and giving women the right to vote) or the Civil Rights Act (it took Congress until 1964 to pass this legislation which was supposed to end discrimination of all kinds in all arenas, but they had to reinforce it with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ensure that black people had the right to vote) been enacted without a little anger to bring people together and move them to act? Would the boneheads in Washington ever have passed the ADA if there had not been some anger to initially spark and then sustain the work it took to pass this legislation? Compliance is another story, but we won't get into that here.

I guess all I'm really trying to say is that anger can be a motivating and constructive force. I am an angry cripple and damn proud of it! I'll put the anger to work, and, if anybody thinks that there's "nothing worse than an angry cripple," tell it to somebody who gives a damn and stay the hell out of my way. There's LOTS of work to do.

Response to Gary and all other "angry crips"

Story

Last changed: October 20, 2003