So then. Back to our
clown.
It turns out he’s not ha-ha funny, weird, scary, a
psychopath of the sewers. He’s a bloke,
just an actor. Maybe between “real” jobs.
He’s on a zero hours
contract. He’s wet, because it’s been
raining on and off for hours. He’s tired
because he was worrying about how he’s going to afford to feed his girlfriend
and one year old and pay his gas bill, and as a consequence, slept poorly. Toddlers have screamed when they’ve seen
him. Older kids have poked him and tried
to pull off his red nose. The outfit he’s
wearing is uncomfortable and ill fitting, and belongs to a well-known burger
company, who’ve previously employed legal warfare (so I won’t name them). And his job today is to hand out fliers in
the high street promoting the new Vege HealthBurger. Tonight he will go home, watch Casualty with
his partner and feverish kid, and worry about the same things many of us worry
about. Tomorrow, he’ll stand outside
another branch of the burger joint, and do more of the same.
Terrorising kids or throwing two boomerangs simultaneously while
whistling Yankee Doodle will not be on his agenda. Because he is a clown but not a real
clown. A mere pastiche of a clown.
Right uniform. Wrong stereotype.
Being disabled can sometimes be like this. A recent example from my world.
We went to a shop selling fireplaces nearby. We wanted a flueless gas fire, but were told
by the assistant that this might not be suitable because…(you could hear the
sound of cogs spinning and desperate sound of back-peddling at this point) it
might be danger….and here she stopped as it was obvious by our faces that a)
what she was about to say might get her a response she mightn’t want to hear
and b) she’d mis-read our uniform. Blindness
to her, possibly having never met anyone who is, did not involve bullshy,
confident, competent, and forthright us, Blind implied incompetence with
fire. It might have also meant “a bit
simple round the edges” too. It might
have meant: “aah, they’ve come all the way to the shop without a carer…how
brave”. It might have meant none of these. The assistant’s attitude suggested I’m
not too far off the mark and I’d lay money on me being close to the truth here. Anyhow, the gas fire was duly paid for with
no further mention of what dreadful, flame-induced accidents might be told in a
future disaster-filled newspaper headline. Hard cash talks, thank goodness.
When you are disabled, you carry your clown uniform with
you, like it or not. And the clown uniform may not be such an inept analogy since
disability and clowns are both something to be both mocked and feared (with
certain people, and not all of the time).
However, the potential to inadvertently be the symptom and object of
someone else’s fear, dread or humour is always a potential phenomenon you’re
aware of as hovering in the periphery, like a dog who has eaten some rotten
meat and might cause an almighty stench with the sort of power puff that could
cull a hippo. Additionally, what a lot
of disabled people have noticed, since time began, but even more so now with
the right-wing agenda being purveyed as only, or at least main gig in town, is
the level of hatred against us is rising.
Even clowns don’t get egged, kicked, verbally abused and reminded by
clueless Neanderthals how much of a “drain of society” we are.
It would actually be better, and easier to deal with
situations where people *are* more up front and personal. I can argue and fight with the best of them,
and sometimes even get a kick out of taking down bullshit when I smell it
coming from someone courtesy of their ill-informed, spurious idiot babblings. It’s the situations when gut instinct tells
you that you are about to be discriminated against, or somehow treated
differently, but have no idea why, because you’ve no idea what’s going on the
other person’s head, that problematic
scenarios occur. How can you fight
against an invisible gas which you cannot locate and can’t identify but one
whose suspected existence you know will guarantee you aren’t invited for that
follow-up job interview? A sense of
humour and a confident outlook can go a long way (and I’ve fought off many a
doubting Thomas with both, simply but both smiling and being simultaneously
no-nonsense. Not each and every time
though, it’s mentally draining and sometimes you’re just not in the right frame
of mind to take on such a seemingly invisible but undeniable foe.
At a recent job interview I where I failed to obtain the
post, I was, on the one hand, convinced I wasn’t being fobbed off when I was
told they had found a better person to fill the post. Instinct told me the interviewer wasn’t faking
sincerity and interest. I knew during the hour’s grilling that I’d hit
a couple of fairly minor weak spots in my previous experience and cursed myself
at some of the questions I could have answered with more oomph. On the other hand, was me not getting the post
as a result of my partial sight? Knowing
the reasoning behind me not getting this job is the kind of *potential*
discrimination we face every day – and its soul destroying. Did my interviewer have an enlightened, or
heaven knows realistic view of my “uniform”?
Did they make all the right noises in the knowledge I might kick off if
I it was plain I was being treated as a second-class candidate?
I reasonably sure I was beaten by someone more experienced
than me – so I don’t have a problem with not getting the job.
Being disabled is like being famous. You get noticed, pointed at, trolled, abused,
ridiculed, told your face doesn’t fit and your presence is equally unwelcome. However, unlike a celebrity, you don’t get a
greasy fat cheque after each theatre appearance, snooker game, book you write, or
TV show you rock up to.
Next time: My double
personality – blind or not?
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