D-Cool VS D.Guche

I’m still reading Pattern Recognition . I know this has been forever, but I only rad the book, it seems , when I am on the train. The protagonist has this ability of predicting, “cool” by pattern recognition: ergo the books title. A number of years ago , not long after I came to Salt Lake, I tried to produce a radio show called Disability Cool a title I had ripped off from the old Disability Rag an column written by Mary Johnson. I found producing a volunteer radio show is a lot of work and hence the show never went very far: I never completed a single show. However, I sill, terribly believe in the concept of D-Cool and I do believe the coolness is there

I also believe there is a quality I refer to as Disability Gauche. D. Gauche is a quality I see when people with a disability are so caught up with themselves that everything seems to be about them. Case in point: I sit on a local board which awards funding to people with disabilities for assistive technology. I sit on the boar with an attorney who is also in a wheelchair. He is a para(paraplegic) and is so full of himself it’s nauseating. I have to admit the guy IS a high roller( excuse the pun). I think he really means to do good as well but he just rubs everyone the wrong way. I am sensitive to the notion that I might have a giant case of the

Jealousies. There are other example usually one form of super Crip or another.

It looks however, I am being given yet again another chance to develop this notion of Disability Cool. I got to talking with the boss this morning after I got in to work, it was just she and time, very early, talking about our visions. As we spoke I interjected my vision of Disability Cool and how I thought there should be some sort of a show case to highlight these folks or the concept o D-Cool.

So maybe the giant e\wheel of revolution has come round again and the technology of the age is right to put all these pieces together. With the ubiquity of the INTERNET and the ability to produce pod casts we are going to try our luck at popdcasts an I want to explore a number of podcast round the topic of D-Cool. What D-cool is, who has it and maybe who does not have it in the PWD community.

I am not D-Cool. I don’t pretend to be, I never have been nor do I think I will every be D-Cool. Example, this morning I was sitting in front of the train as I usually do. I confess I WAS trying to be cool. As I was perched o nop of the mini-high block waiting for the train, I was trying to place the “August” sticker on my transit pass—a pretty stupid thing for any quad to do-Just as the train came into the station my hand spasmed and I dropped the sticker and my pass. I searched all round and could not see it on the ground so the items had to be on my person somewhere. As soon as I accessed the train I rolled to the person sitting in the first seat…and asked her search me till she found these items and she did. If I was cool, disability cool, I would have looked vexed and just swallowed the price of my pass, $26.50 and got on with my life but 26.50 is 26.50.