Being Better Jerks
I don't know about you guys, but I was raised to be polite. Manners above all. That's probably because, like I said before, people who don't belong in a minority simply don't see the world as a big boxing ring like I do. To them, a sweet old lady is just that, a sweet old lady, not the incarnation of a millenary oppression.
But make no mistake, what might seem like an innocent question is, in fact, a form of violence, an attempt of communicating and maintaining their truth: that I'm nothing but a broken body whose sole purpose is to satisfy abled curiosity for tragedy. And by doing this with what looks like an innocent question, my reluctance to comply looks a lot like a lack of manners to the abled people around me.
The crippling fear of breaking this life long conditioning sometimes causes me to answer yes in that quick moment of panic, but I try to remind myself that there is an entire minority relying on me being just a little less polite, even if they don't know me and I don't know them. We owe it to each other to be better jerks, even to sweet old ladies.
