you know you’re in the disability community when….

Jump to Comments

There are a lot of lists that start out saying, ‘you know you’re from’ or ‘you know you’re a ‘.  But for different people, the list I am trying to make could say different things.  ‘You know you have a disability when’ ‘you know your child has special needs when’ ‘you know you’ve been spending too much time on disability blogs when’ – so – I made up a catch all title to include everybody, people with disabilities, people in the disability field, parents, etc.  If you make your own list – and I hope you do! – feel free to modify the title as you see fit.

Anyway, here’s mine.  Alternate titles could be ‘You know you’re a have an Autism spectrum disorder’ and ‘You know you’ve been PCA’ing too much’ 

  You know you’re in the disability community when….

- your client’s mother asks how your client is doing, and you reply without a hint of irony that except for a six-point-five minute seizure, everything’s great

- you have found yourself telling a preschooler to ‘quit playing with your g-tube’

- you see nothing wrong with doing a bolus feed in public

- you have ever told a shopkeeper that you would buy something from them, but you just don’t feel right buying from an inaccessible store

- you have ever not gone into a store or restaurant because it is not accessible, despite the fact that you can walk just fine

- somebody, anybody, being potty-trained, no matter at what age, is a huge, magnificent, wonderful event

- you have ever read labels at a grocery store to find the products with the highest fat content for a client

- you thank a child for waiting until she is out of the shower to have a big seizure, as moving a prone body when it is slippery and wet is very hard

- you compliment someone on the designs on their AFO’s

- you have approached a complete stranger to ask where they got that cup-holder on their wheelchair, as your boss has been looking for a similar one

- you know that service dogs are just as likely as other dogs to eat poop, garbage, and other disgusting things, and therefore, have a policy to never, ever touch a service dog even when they are off duty because who knows where that mouth was?

- you complain about the loudness of flourescent lights

- an awful lot of people think you have allergies, which you don’t, because allergies are a lot easier to explain than sensory sensitivities due to an autism spectrum disorder

- ‘broken elevators in the building’ days are a legitimate excuse for people to miss work

- you decide to start using more sign language, and it takes you a good couple weeks to realize that ‘regular’ people think you’re blowing them a kiss when you say ‘thank you’

- you think that the most unrealistic thing happening on Greys anatomy is not all the sex in the on-call room, but that an Aspie doctor would get to be that well-renowned and not have better patient-care skills

I should mention that almost all of the above came directly from my own life, and are not made up to sound funny – they just are funny!

So…..what would go on your list? 

(ps.  it’s  Saturday, 12:30 pm.  weird that it’s the middle of the night in Australia.  just weird.)

6 Comments

Filed under Ekie