Thoughts on "Sorry, Wrong Number"

 

I didn’t realize, until I finally watched Sorry,Wrong Number this week, in my quest to give you new/old things to say about the disability experience in fiction, that I’d mixed up “Sorry, Wrong Number” and “Wait Until Dark” for a long time.  If you’ll look at the links, though, they do have a lot in common—A-list actresses who got award nominations for playing (somewhat) helpless and the gathering suspense of someone who can’t defend themselves facing danger, though it would seem that Hepburn’s plight in the later film is something of a case of mistaken identity, as opposed to Stanwyck’s Leona getting caught up in her husband’s crooked plot after years of using a heart condition that she sort of…talked herself into to manipulate others.

If Leona Stephenson in “Sorry, Wrong Number” weren’t a tremendous, ball-busting bitch—in some ways, as a disabled woman on a short leash myself—I sort of enjoyed the way she had of getting what she wanted, at first, especially in a world where “Add To Cart” isn’t a substitute—“Sorry, Wrong Number” might have been a difficult watch for someone who has experienced dependency first hand.  (It might make an interesting 21^st century reboot, or at least something to consider as someone writes an internet thriller, especially if someone cast a disabled actress…it might make the debates on representation and #ownvoices more challenging though.  But whoever did it would have to be careful about not creating a Vince-Vaughn-Psycho-shot-for-shot thing because I can’t really imagine a modern actress saying or typing “I’m an invalid,” ever, which is a small beam of light in a time when I’m not sure the disability rights movement has accomplished very much.

Maybe someone could rewrite it with MS for Selma Blair…I would be into watching that.(If I were still a teenager or something, I would imagine myself writing it, too, but I don’t think I could do that, anymore.)  I’ll leave that with the Universe, though, and see if someone picks it up.

 

 

In Case Copper Courier Passes...

 

Why Medicaid Cuts Make Me Think Of Luigi Mangione

 

 

Not because Mr. Mangione was on disability like me. By all accounts, he comes from a wealthy background that could’ve afforded him all of the alternative medicine he could take into his head(or aching back) to want. But reading that story over the summer still reminded me of how small our world got when I was working on our last appeal of an attempt to cut my personal care benefits in 2012. That is most of what I did that year, most of what I thought about, even when people asked me about other things.  Mentally, part of me was looking for some mundane personal detail—why don’t personal-care plans take more note of menstrual periods, for instance—they happen to half the planet…just not, shall we say, to the lucky half—to stuff in some manila or electronic folder, and hope that it pressed some heartstring someplace. In the end, I guess that time had sort of a happy ending. Friends wrote personal statements for me, the doctor that I’d only seen one other time came through with a strong and stirring statement, I had support from the local independent-living center, and we even got most of the money back. I don’t know where I’d be without support that everyone may not have.   It still was a small dark time, ten months spent e-mailing strangers and looking for technicalities…if my mobility issues had been compounded by the kinds of pain that it seems like Mangione suffered, I’m not sure that I could have helped myself from taking it personally and maybe taking it out on someone else. People also can’t get time back, not that being a disabled adult means I’ve never lost an instant.  I’ve been in a wheelchair since birth so the appeal process put some strain on my double act with my mother, too, and, even though it seems dramatic to say so, we think of that as a lost year.  I don’t want another one; I think that’s a mean thing to do when people are just trying to get through our lives, largely in situations not designed to meet our needs, since the United States is still designed for abled people: a lack of access for people with mobility aids and workplaces that demand *more* than full-time, if anything all fit together to remind me that very little was designed with me in mind.
It's hard not to do what I’ve been taught to do at times like this and bring up the ways I’m good at being Special: List some publications(yes, there are some) or show off a picture of me with the fam looking cute.  I’m pretty good at being mainstream-acceptable, which is why I can still recite my state-college GPA(3.2) from journalism school after decades, even after it wasn’t my ticket to ride.

 My fitting in is not the point. You shouldn’t have to deserve healthcare, housing, or to go to the toilet. You really shouldn’t have to wonder if your own government treats you like they do because they think you can’t fight back.

Erika Jahneke is a writer and activist with Progressive Democrats of America.  She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy after an accident at birth and needs extensive attendant services. She’s based in Phoenix.