An epihany

My son is standing on the couch behind me. He just sneezed ... all over my bald spot.

On with the post.

My recent discovery that I have had an always semi-fucked body of late has been giving me some comfort. It wasn't just a lack of will that cause me to fail at being athletic or "fit". It was also in having a deficient physiology (1). Of course the downside has been my being aware that other people don't suffer discomfort when moving around. It simply never occurred to me until now that being in constant discomfort your entire life was something other people didn't experience.

I know. It's moronic.

Anyway, today I was in the supermarket. I knocked a packet of biscuits onto the ground. I have low-grade self-diagnosed OCD about objects on the ground in high-traffic walking areas. I will pick up stuff even if I didn't drop it in case somebody slips on it. But instead of picking the biscuits up I soft-kicked the packet under the shelving, thus out of the way but alas not restored to its rightful place on the shelf.

Then I said, somewhat loudly, 'I can't pick that up ... I'm a disabled! and strode off down the aisle and around the corner.

Area man clearly growing more comfortable with his appellation of 'person with a disability'(2).

(1) When I told dad about my Steven Bradbury (my fucked left-hip) and that my body had, in essence, 'always been fucked' and 'caused discomfort my entire life' I didn't get an apology from him. An apology for all the years of furrowed brows and prods and comments about my weight or level of activity. Instead ... he asked whether my Diet Coke consumption was an influencing factor. Old Mikey would have gone off in a blistering nasty attack. Well, maybe not that. But old Mikey would have gotten angry about it. Instead I simply said 'well coke is the second most drunk liquid on the planet after water and given a sample size of six billion people it's safe to assume any such health impacting factors would have been found by now.' Though I wimped out and added a rider by saying 'but it's true it doesn't exist in nature and clearly the body doesn't need it.' Hey, he's had a rough time. He didn't need me to get in his face about his near forty years of judgmental parenting.
(2) Technically 'disabilities' given my Viking horde of other physical and mental deficiencies. Morbid obesity is a big, fat beard-to-his-belt-buckle-Harry-High-Pants Viking that waddles into battle and, when he disembarks from the long ship, it noticeably rocks back and forth in the water in his wake.