Talk to Me, You Big Lug

If you spend enough time in the world of blogs and if in particular you spend lots of time thinking about people with disabilities you will see very few representations of those same people just being people. There are thousands of obligatory images or stories about pwds (persons or people with disabilities) seen counteracting their disabilities by mountain climbing or skiing; or they are dressed in Madison Avenue business attire–seen conquering the world of business. To be sure, these are important images, especially when our culture thinks of “the disabled” all too often as jobless or at least bereft of human satisfactions. I think the large head of cultural disableism works its way into the nooks and crannies of assumptions–so much so that pwds themselves fall prey to writing or posing for stories in which they appear as over-compensators who go above and beyond the realm of ordinary living. My meager post for today concerns the simple observation that “just hanging out” is what I like to do. Here’s an old photo of me with my late guide dog “Vidal” and yes, we were just hanging out. Vidal wasn’t being Rin Tin Tin and I wasn’t fresh from climbing Everest. I’m sure Vidal could have been Rin Tin Tin but he preferred eating cat food to heroism and mostly I prefer my sofa to mountain climbing. I also like to eat Doritos. & so my brief point here is that just being is its own compensation. Just knocking around. That’s the kind of story I’m interested in.  

S.K.

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto