HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

YUP, I ROLL 52 TODAY

One year walking this earth for every card in the deck.

More than 30 of it spent with my wonderful wife, Heidi.

The past nearly two without my late father, Ken.

Product of small town Midwest, far outside Cleveland and just outside the smokestacks of Akron.

Moved to South Florida on Election Day 2000.

Almost 15 years in our historic Little Havana house.

Put half what we paid for it into restoration.

Will be paid off in fewer than 2 years.

Hard wood floors, some in need of carpentry and a refinish.

Good bones, lots of abuse in its nearly hundred years.

Beaten a bit, not unlike my body after its more than half century in the rain, snow, wind and sun.

Would ask for a re-do on anything.

Learned from my mistakes.

Treasured every friendship.

Knew when to leave a job when the bosses or owners were toxic.

Reinvented myself at least three times....means prolly a pair of reinventions still on the road ahead.

No desire to live past average life expectancy.

Why be greedy about it.

Have already outlived a lot of classmates and rock stars.

Unafraid of what's on the other side.

For sure, no more bills.

No more Testigos banging on my door to wake me from a Saturday nap.

Just long, long rest would suit me fine.

Until then, lots of rescue cats to take care of.

And blog posts to write.

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