I hate playing the disabled card too. That is why I don't have a cane, a scooter nor a blue mirror tag. I may need them someday but not today.

Hmm, I don't like the idea that there are "good disabled persons" (who are stoic in the face of injury or illness and refuse all help from anyone) and "bad disabled persons" (who use their illness/injury as a license to do terrible things like cut in line and kick puppies). My friend J, for example, lost his leg in a car accident when he was a teen. For awhile he never wanted to tell anyone, or use his disabled placard, or hold anyone's arm going up and down the stairs. But after awhile I think he realized that there shouldn't be any shame in admitting limitations. Yeah, some people look at him and say, "You don't LOOK disabled, why do you get a placard?" But I like the explanation given in The Spook Theory (pdf), and I think it applies to disabilities as well as illnesses. When J. "plays the disabled card" to park in a handicapped spot, his good leg doesn't get as tired as quickly in the day, and maybe he'll do better in physical therapy, and maybe he'll have enough energy to practice piano or take the dogs for a walk or something he actually wants to be doing.

Yeah... I don't think I knew *how* to go about getting special consideration when Dad died. I didn't so much as hand in a single essay a day late.

But I kind of wanted to.

The bit I quoted I really liked. Having my dad drop dead in front of my eyes was something that left no visible mark, so I really craved recognition for it. Especially since his death was never announced at our school, so even some people in my year level didn't realise that he'd died.

A few years later, I got up in chapel to present the first annual scholarship in his name. I lost it completely. It was the first public acknowledgment in front of my peers that my dad had died.

On a different note - when my mum had her heart attack last year, the doctor that treated her in hospital was the one that received that scholarship. Full circle, I guess.

Mrs. Doohickie played the disabled card for a while. She has terrible knees, fibromyalgia, and arthritis, and when she was attending college as a commuting student, she simply couldn't get from Class A to Class B in time unless she had that handicap placard in the window.

I must admit that I kind of got used to the convenience of close-in parking at the mall.

Then.... the placard expired and my lovely bride said she really didn't think she needed it anymore. She never really did need it, except for the specific case of getting from Class A to Class B in a short enough period of time while she was going to college.

When part of the treatment for fibro is to get more exercise, what's the point of a handicap placard?