Abled

And another stupid icicle because the stupid snow covered everything that didn't look dead outside.

Did I mention that snow is stupid? It is in April, for sure.

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It's officially official. I'm enjoying the show Raines. So is my father, which I suppose indicates the insanity is genetic or something. At least the liking for completely screwed up lead characters must be.

Does this mean I have to start a new t.v. club?

I'm not sure I really want to share my wine gums.

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Today's post title (see? I did get to it eventually) has to do with a something that came up in that workshop thingy I was at earlier in the week. It was fairly tangential to what we were supposed to be doing, of course, but then with my short attention span it's just amazing that I wasn't distracting everyone in the room by drawing random pen lines all over my arms at that hour of the day.

Er, yeah. I'm five.

Anyway.

The point was made, briefly, that some people are touchy about the use of the word disabled. That's when I commented to Wheat (yep, Wheat was there putting up with my boredom) that if you followed what seems to be the definition of disabled to certain people, then I'm disabled.

Me and millions of others out there who... wear glasses.

Seriously, though. I wouldn't function in the modern world without the lenses. I wouldn't be able to drive, to use a computer without having the monitor a nose-length away from my face, to read signs... we can go on, but you get the picture. I probably wouldn't get the picture without my glasses, but there you go. Without specialised equipment (isn't that what glasses are?) I would have a very limited life.

I'd be disabled.






Is anyone buying into this argument? I'm not, but if I've convinced any of you then maybe there's something to it.

I hope not, though.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that too many of us are looking for excuses. There are people out there in the world who have very serious challenges in life, but then there are those who really need to start looking at what they can do rather than what they can't do.

Me, I'm a nearsighted astigmatic with a buggered-up ankle and a bad knee. Does that make me disabled? I doubt it. Maybe I can't run up the stairs, but I can still climb them. Plenty of people wouldn't be able to manage even that.

What about, say, left-handedness? It certainly puts me at a disadvantage when using most power tools. When I was in university it made it difficult to find a place to sit because the vast majority of lecture theatre desks have the writing surface on the right-hand side. There have been studies that show left-handers live shorter lives and are more likely to die or be badly injured in accidents. So is left-handedness a disability?

Of course not.

It sounds pretty silly to think that way at all, but it's not too far off from the way some people seem to see their own, relatively minor life problems.

Sometimes I think our PC world needs a great big dose of suck it up, princess.

Now, I'm not the world's most optimistic person (it's not a case of the glass being half full or half empty when the blamed thing obviously has a whopping great crack down the side) but even I can see that when I look at the big picture I have it pretty darned good. I'm able to earn a living. I can afford to eat and pay my rent. I have the luxury of whinging about whatever is bothering me while knowing that whatever is bothering me is NOT the end of the world.

Believe me, when it actually is the end of the world I'll tell you.

Repeatedly.

I'm not about to end this particular blather with a benediction or even a suggestion that we all go out and count our positives. That's completely not me. I'll just say that maybe it might be a good idea if we all took a second away from the usual complaining to realise that there are far more abled moments in an average day then there are disabled ones.

After that you can go back to the whining if you like. I know I probably will.





There wouldn't be many words on this blog if I didn't, after all.