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\u201cSo\u2026are you a part of the Blue Man Group?\u201d Ella was asked over and over again last night.<\/p>\n
\u201cNope,\u201d she chirped back, \u201cI\u2019m the Handicapped Parking symbol guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few laughed and complimented her, but most of the time she was met with an uncomfortable confusion. Not because they didn\u2019t get it, but because they were unsure of whether or not it was offensive to laugh.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve made it a taboo in this country to laugh at the differences of others, and that\u2019s a good thing, unless it stops us from laughing with<\/em> them. I have a lot of family, friends, and acquaintances with disabilities of every kind, and let me just tell you\u2026.they\u2019re funny. Their lives are often bordering on comedic genius, and they know it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s often a dark and slightly warped sense of humor, but it\u2019s not all that different from the dark gallows humor of the Irish. We have\u00a0Irish family and friends\u2026they roar with laughter in the face of death, and the world usually shakes its collective head and laughs along with them. But hear a paraplegic crack jokes about life with catheters or an amputee cut up about his\u00a0prosthetic, and the crickets chirp because disability isn\u2019t funny.<\/p>\n But it is. It really<\/em> is.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m here to say please laugh. It\u2019s okay to laugh. Their lives are no less humorous than yours, and their stories are wild. And next year, when my daughter dons gang clothes and goes as a Crip (the plan so far), it\u2019s okay to snort with laughter because it really is funny<\/em>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about time that we got beyond simply protecting the dignity of those who are differently abled, and starting\u00a0enjoying their humanity. That includes laughing with them at the taboo stuff. And that\u00a0really is<\/em>\u00a0okay.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cSo\u2026are you a part of the Blue Man Group?\u201d Ella was asked over and over again last night. \u201cNope,\u201d she chirped back, \u201cI\u2019m the Handicapped Parking symbol guy.\u201d A few laughed and complimented her, but most of the time she was met with an uncomfortable confusion. Not because they didn\u2019t get it, but because they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n