Disability? Let's call it something else.

There came a point, during my last review, where I felt kind of silly calling Kevin Connolly disabled.

I mean, look. He's doing a handstand, for Christ's sake.

I've been mulling over that word a lot lately. Disabled. I identify with it. A whole community identifies with it. For the time being, it's our designated politically-correct label (although people-first language mixes it up a bit, calling us "people with disabilities" instead of the briefer-but-blunter "disabled people"). And up until now, I've never had a problem with it. I used to think that its combination of roots—which means, very clearly, "not able"—fit me fine: I can't hold a pen, can't run a marathon, can't stand in one spot for too long without falling over. I'm, in a general sense, not able.

But Connolly? What do you call a man who luges, jousts, and cliff jumps, but can't reach the top shelf of a bookcase?

In all of my research for that last review, I ran across the particular label disabled exactly once: when Connolly insisted he wasn't. The quote was from Connolly's memoir, Double Take, and I'm posting the whole passage here just because it's so incredibly worth reading:

I don't think of myself as "disabled." As I interpret the word, you are only disabled if you are incapable of overcoming the challenges presented in any given situation. I might be disabled when trying to haul a hundred pounds of concrete up a flight of stairs, but to my mind, I'm perfectly able-bodied when I am skateboarding around New York City. Being disabled is also a matter of choice. Anything that you try to hide from the world also imposes a limit on you. If you don't want to risk showing off your wobbly knees or clumsiness on the dance floor and decide to sit on the sidelines, then you are unable to dance. Thus, disabled.

This quote hit me like a bucket of water to the face. As obvious as this idea may seem to me now, I'd never read anything like it before. Not only does it partly exempt Connolly (and several other disability-pride advocates I'm currently reading) from the label disabled, but it places that label on anyone incapable of functioning within a certain set of circumstances. By this definition, I know several able-bodied people who are disabled in regards to art—those folks whose chicken scratch can't even amount to a proper stick figure. Can tone-deafness qualify as a musical disability? Are the people who request forks at sushi bars disabled in their Japanese dining etiquette?

On the flip side of things, how disabled am I really? Could I run if I wanted to? Sure—I've tackled the ellipticals at the gym before, which replicate the fluid motion of jogging. Could I balance in one spot without toppling over? Certainly, with my trusty cane. Hold a pen? Yes, with both hands, and my handwriting's not bad either.

Or at least legible.

So is Kevin Connolly disabled?

Well—not entirely. In some circumstances, such as the one where he's lugging around a hundred pounds of concrete, I'd say yes; in others, no.

That's how I'd respond to any assessment of disability. Ability isn't a coin flip, landing on one side (able) or another (disabled). It's a spectrum. And more than that, it's a fingerprint: each individual's level of ability is comprised of circumstances in which they can function effectively (able) and ones in which they can't function effectively (disabled). Nor are these categories fixed. Without my cane and leg braces, I'm mostly disabled. While using them, I'm enabled. That's where most people are mistaken about assistive equipment—wheelchairs, canes, crutches, and walkers aren't tragic markers of some bodily loss or limit. They're empowering. They serve the same purpose as Connolly's skateboard, so oohed and aahed by the media, and should be viewed in the same constructive light. They should convey ability, not disability. That's their job, anyways.

Medically, disability is still appropriate. It pinpoints a deficit to be practically managed or accommodated. Socially, though, and in terms of human experience, I'm beginning to warm up to the phrase physical difference. It's not a distinguished nod to political correctness, or a way of sidestepping negative connotations, and it's not some Pollyannish way of cushioning disability, like calling short people "vertically challenged." It's a more accurate description of reality. My body functions differently than yours. I may have developed new ways of running, standing, and writing over the years, but that doesn't mean I can't run, stand, or write, period.

I'm fascinated by physical difference.

That sounds a bit better than saying I'm fascinated by disability, doesn't it? Phrased the latter way, my curiosity comes off almost as morbid, a distant neighbor to the Germans' shadenfreude. "Disability" refers to a flaw, shortcoming, or abnormality. To express interest in such a thing is to admit being caught up in the tragedy and melodrama of the body's malfunctions. But where "disability" emphasizes lack, "physical difference" emphasizes variety. No tragedy or melodrama there—just the particular ways the body looks, works, grows, and changes.

If you imagine that each body has its own language, translated into movement, then I want to be a polyglot. I want to speak in the firing of nerves and the contraction of tendons. I want to gather these languages and present them, somehow, as stories, so that others can become fluent in them as well.

Blindness. Deafness. Numbness. Spasticity. Hypersensitivity. Hypertrophy. Atrophy.

Difference. Not disability.

Meg