HOME    text version of navigation bar

DISCONFIRMATION abridged

BILLY GOLFUS
Billy is an artiste with beret, disability troublemaker
with a bad attitude and rock and roll roué.
He doesn’t do journalism and he doesn’t do windows.

FROM
The Ragged Edge:
The Disability Experience from the Pages
of The Disability Rag
Edited by Barrett Shaw

There’s this thing called Disconfirmation. Fancy word, huh? It sort of means being ignored. Not exactly, but close enough. Disabled people are just one group that gets Disconfirmed.

(William) James (who everybody calls the father of psychology) ... wrote about Disconfirmation.

"No more fiendish punishment," (James wrote), "could be devised, even were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof."

It happens to everybody that I know that’s disabled. Happens with friends and family, happens with these do-gooder social systems. For a long time I figured I was the only one; then I was talking with Sandy Ford, a nurse who does research with the Hyperbaric Chamber at Hennepin County Medical Center.

"It happens EVERY time. EVERY time, " says Sandy Ford. "Like we’ve got a guy injured, I don’t know, this week. And he’s 32 and he has this cute little fiancée that’s there holding his hand. That’s there crying. Weeping, weeping. All this stuff. And. Unless he has an extremely good recovery she is NOT going to hang in there …"

(And friends leave.)

… My friend Stevie, the writer, said having your friends leave happens to everybody. I want to say pure and simple: not all at once or the same way as it happens to people who have been hurt or handicapped, it don’t …

[Continued On Next Page: Click Here]

text version of navigation bar

Stories From Our Visitors

[ Ragged Edge Home | Contents | Search | Post ]

Send mail to jhasse@jvlnet.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 1998 - 2004 The Advocado Press. All rights reserved.