Pseudocrips (editorial from Newmobility Magazine).

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Pseudocrips
By Alan Troop

About 20 years ago, a few years after I shattered a few cervical vertebrae and joined the wonderful world of disability, I attended a workshop where I spoke on sex and disability. Afterwards, an able-bodied man came up to me and said, "Boy, do I understand where you're coming from. I'm disabled too."

"Yes?" I said, cocking an eyebrow, waiting to see where he was coming from.

He held up his left hand. "See?" he said. "My left thumb is paralyzed."

I thought then--and I think now--that this man was a jerk. Sure, on some levels, disability, like pain, is subjective. I'll even concede that one person's minor inconvenience could be another's major handicap. What I won't do is accept some digitally challenged walkie or any other pseudocrip as my brother or sister in disability.

It's amazed me over the years how many barely inconvenienced people embrace the concept of being disabled. It amazes me more how many other people buy into their bogus handicaps. There's a real danger in today's victim culture that the definition of disability will be so expanded that it will create a sort of disability inflation.

We've already seen this sort of disability creep destroy the availability of handicapped parking for wheelchair-using drivers. On rainy, cold or busy days, I know better than to expect an available handicapped parking space at my local shopping center. Most will be taken by people who've claimed they can't walk long distances so they can park close to the mall--and then spend the day walking long distances shopping the mall from end to end.

Since the ADA was passed, an unbelievable assortment of pseudo-disabled people--including the obese, the drunk, the drugged and even the nearsighted--have filed suits demanding ADA protection. Fortunately, this last year, the Supreme Court turned back their efforts to make government protection available to every liar, whiner and pretender who wants to claim disability status.

Some disability activists have lamented the ruling as exclusionary. I think it was great. To me, nothing could be more pathetic than claiming to be less able in order to gain some financial or competitive advantage.

Sure, on some level or another, all of us are disabled. We've all had experiences that have left us maimed and scarred, either psychically or physically or both. But that doesn't put everyone who's gotten a bad break in life on the same level of loss as those of us who've suffered permanent disability from injury, disease or at birth.

Not that there's that much difference between some of those walkie cheaters and some of our disabled brethren. Golfers aren't the only athletes who lie about their handicaps.

I've heard quads complain about paras invading quad rugby. Paras I know have bitched about single amputees and other mostly ambulatory types who only sit in chairs when they play wheelchair baseball. Local disabled sailors have been gossiping about another country's three-man Paralympic sailing team that includes one member whose only disability is two missing fingers--a disability maybe when it comes to flipping the bird but hardly remarkable otherwise.

I always thought competition was about doing your best against the best possible opponents. Maybe we can set up a new disabled athletic category--"Sportsmanship Challenged"--and let all the cheaters compete with each other, no holds barred.

As for the pseudocrips, I would love to see a new rule adopted: Only those who don't want to be disabled can lay claim to being disabled. Then at least we won't have to worry that some myopic fool might bully his way into piloting an airplane in which we're flying or that the job we're applying for will be given to someone suffering from color blindness.

If this is elitism (or disablism) so be it. The real crips among us know how difficult it is to compete and prosper in our overwhelmingly able-bodied world. To see the few protections and advantages won by our advocates being claimed by those who either don't need or don't deserve them simply adds insults to our injuries.

Writer Alan Troop is a businessman and ardent Floridian. When not writing, working or complaining he can be found sailing on Biscayne Bay.