Dear Wheelchair: We Need to Talk

FROM THE EARTH BOUND TOM BOY FILES

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

Dear Wheelchair:

 

We need to talk. Yes, I know: no conversation in history starting off that way ever ended well. But there are some things we need to hash out.

 

We’ve been together nearly half a decade. Wow, that’s significant. Five years is the length of cohabitation most health insurance policies require before a chair user can get a new chair. Not that I’m in the market for another, dear. I’m just sayin’…

 

Now, babe, don’t cry. Need some reassurance? You are amazing at giving me my own space. I mean, you are the opposite of clingy. Of course, I would expect nothing less from someone named Torque Storm. Not exactly the moniker of a clinging vine.

 

But sometimes you’re just a little too laissez–faire. I’ve got an image to uphold, you know. People see a gimp girl in a wheelchair and they immediately assume I’m “wheelchair bound.” (Stop snickering. The B&D of our private life is nobody’s business.) They’re convinced that we’re perpetually fused together. That I shower in you, sleep in you. That I never transfer out of you into a theater seat. Can you imagine what they’d say if they saw me taking a few steps with my walker? Good God, the fallout that would cause. 

 

This affects your image, too, you know. You and your progenitors have established your reputation as symbols of failure, as prisons on wheels. What would they say if it leaked out that you’re really enablers, huh? Enablers of mobility, of freedom…of independence, even! What if I went to the press and told them the truth: that I never would have gotten an education, made a career or left the dang house without you in my life? Two can play at that game, my friend.

 

Come on now, baby. I didn’t mean to be cruel. You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. So what if you’re not my first, or even my fifth? So what if my chair throughout college cradled my backside like no other? It didn’t mean anything. It was nothing compared to what we have. We’re going to be together forever, just you wait and see.

 

Or at least until insurance says I can roll you to the curb.

DISABILITY...

A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH?

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

Step right up, kids. I’ve got something I gotta tell you, and that something it this: drive stupid and you’ll face the worst possible fate you could ever imagine.

What do I mean by “drive stupid?” I mean taking your eyes off the road, especially for stupid reasons. Like to replay that Demi Lovato tune. Or to re-adjust those flesh tunnels in your blown-out earlobes. Or to send a text from your Hushed app to that unwitting recipient who thinks you’re a chick from Barcelona when you’re really a dude from Barstow.

You see, distracted driving can have some mighty brutal results. Like wrapping your dad’s Kia Sorrento around a tree. Think how mad he’s gonna be when it’s totaled ‘cause your leg is now attached to the carburetor. 

 

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve seen the “scare ‘em” movies in Driver’s Ed of real-life crashes. You think I’m trying to frighten you with the specter of death.  Au contraire, amigo mio. I am trying to make you piss your pants at the thought of something much worse than death: being disabled.

Being disabled is way worse than death. At least a corpse is still a full-fledged person. But a wheelchair user? Truth be told, going from “cool to crippled” would drop your value to about six-tenths of a human being. That’s why we’ve placed a non-disabled kid in a vintage wheelchair, told him to hang his head in shame, and put his photo on the above poster.

Being disabled is absolutely the worst thing we could think of. The worst combination of fear and shame imaginable.

Worse than running over a toddler. Worse than doing time for vehicular manslaughter. Worse than being dogged by a felony record. Hell, worse than death itself.

So the next time you text while driving because you figure ending up in a coffin doesn’t sound so bad, remember: you could end up in a wheelchair instead.

For more satire in the name of social justice, visit 

Real, Vibrant and Not-to-be-Ignored

EDUCATION OF ALL CHLDREN

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

2015 marked the 40^th anniversary of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), landmark federal civil rights legislation that allows kids with disabilities to sit in school desks alongside non-disabled students. Before 1975, the U.S. was a nation in which the educational needs of eight million “handicapped children” were not being met, with one million such children excluded entirely from the public school system.

The most severely disabled children were forbidden by law to pass through the schoolhouse doors. Among the other seven million, most attended segregated schools with very rudimentary curricula or were sequestered within segregated classrooms. Most were tasked with just busy work and training for menial jobs. 

Like the Sex Pistols sang in “God Save the Queen”: No future, no future, no future for you.

The EHA later evolved into the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which defines kids eligible for services as those who have “a disability that adversely affects academic performance.” Of the eight million children mentioned in the EHA, it’s likely that many had orthopedic that didn’t impair the ability to learn but pushed them into segregated settings. Today, approximately 95 percent of kids with disabilities are attending regular public schools. About two-thirds pass school days alongside their non-disabled peers.

But don’t uncork the champagne just yet.

While U.S. law creates a framework for an integrated setting, good intentions don’t always add up to a meaningful education. Parents, students, school administrators and teachers must still shape a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.

Intrigued?  Check out Pentimento magazine at: http://www.pentimentomag.org/issue-6-toc

My non-fiction memoir piece, “Crip Cargo,” appears in the current issue of this literary magazine for the disability community. An accessible, balanced platform where a piece about a promising future can sit next to a glimpse into a bleaker reality. Readers look together into the dark and the light and connect to both. To see and see again. To see beyond disability.

Don’t expect the usual mass media-crafted tropes of super-crip, inspirational gimp or pathetic victim. The pieces relate indignities, triumphs, and moments of silent or not-so-silent joy. At the heart of any education lies communication. Telling our stories makes us real, vibrant and not-to-be-ignored. 

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2016/04/real-vibrant-and-not-to-be-ignored.html