Even if I somehow wanted to live the disability
stereotype(why would I? No real reason, except not having to be confounding
every day…there might be a certain ease in being what people expect.) I couldn’t
do it.
Because I’d have to be weak yet determined, mature enough to work, yet
childish enough to never want a tongue in my mouth. Assertive(with everyone else but you) but
also willing to dispense highly personal information with the sleek volubility of
one of those recorded buttons at the museum. Not vain or immodest, but
intensely comforted by having strangers examine me as one of life’s urban
curiosities. The stereotype is friendly and secure, but still always looking
for direction, excited by life, but willing to place its nose against the
window glass and watch the real people, the able people, have the real fun and
chances in life.Pity is a relationship, right? The stereotype tries to believe.
It is smart enough to maybe go to class with you, but pliant
enough not to want to be the best at anything. It often aches, but doesn’t say
anything so that you don’t offer it “special treatment” and it gets really
psyched by the thought that if you take its picture from the shoulders up that “you
can barely tell.”It is perfectly fine with its secret grotesque ugliness that
both other people and it smile and dance around a lot. The stereotype has funny
complaints, but it never really gets bothered. Maybe sometime one of the other
stereotypes, Soccer Moms, or Security Dads, will take it to the polls, but the
stereotype focuses on the tiny dot of its home and family and the moment When
Everything Changed
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