Oo, congrats P-C!

Congratulations, P-C!

Way to go, P-C!

Thank you! It's gotten lots of good feedback so far. People are laughing. I'm making people laugh. Also I got paid.

Scrivener is on sale today.

[link]

Ooh! Thank you, Dana!

I wrote this for a contest, but I thought you should see it first. We All Go Or Nobody Does: Accessible Adventures in Message Boards

I suppose it’s always been easier for me to lose myself in a book or movie then to make friends.When I say that, as a woman who lives her whole life in a wheelchair, people think they know everything, picturing towheaded me sitting dejected in a too-big chair while the neighborhood kids played kickball. “Kids can be so cruel,” people sometimes quote knowingly, as if everyone grows out of it.Maybe there were a few incidents, more likely over the Atari or playing pick-up basketball in the driveway rather than kickball.
Another fact people might not know is that I was the kind of dreamy fantasist kid that even other “special” kids didn’t always take to, though it wasn’t until adolescence that the insult of being too weird for the school’s weirdos sank in all the way and, since it only appeared in retrospect, it was only distantly painful, like watching a character in a movie get hurt. I had some friends, and for the most part, a good childhood, but not a crowd.

After college, with my job-hunting at a standstill(media consolidation as well as plain old anti- disability bias claiming my baby career as a victim) television and the internet brought me to some relationships that changed my life, keeping it moving at a time when it seemed that my previous efforts were coming to nothing. At first, it started because I got up earlier to watch the “Buffy” reruns on FX. Then I had plenty of time to eavesdrop on the adult world I was allegedly a part of by lurking on Worldcrossing forums, that, shockingly enough, contained many quippy Buffy fans.Maybe there is no other kind, although other fandoms have the occasional humorless tool who misses the point so I shouldn’t think BTVS is immune, but anyway, it was the humor that hooked me.

I had seen “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” a few times when it was first on, but the goofy name combined with the sweeping melodrama seemingly embodied by the doomed love between Buffy and her vampire first love Angel kept me from sticking with it.Then, years later, I caught a random syndicated rerun that spotlighted the humor, as well as the existential crisis of a handsome bleached-blond vampire with a chip in his head who can no longer bite anyone.

Initially, I just wanted to know things about the show itself, such as how the whole chip thing happened, but I couldn’t help noticing what a close-knit group of friends I’d crash-landed into looking for people to talk about jokes from years in the past, although mostly they put aside some of their private jokes to explain things to the eager newbie. I gradually lost my media-generated fears of sex slavery and identity theft online, as well as my sense that it would be best to remain on the sidelines as an incorporeal quip machine rather than share some of the concrete struggles of life with a disability, like access barriers, unreliable transportation, and the weird things crazy strangers sometimes say to me on the street.
Maybe sharing that stuff didn’t really fix anything, but being honest with my friends brought us closer together and cut through the sense of shame that sometimes followed these incidents.

The event that encapsulated the bond between me and my fellow Buffistas happened a few months later, when I crossed the desert from Phoenix to come to L.A. and hang with them in person, including a Saturday night dance that gave me a rare opportunity to dress to the gothic nines. There was a problem, though: the super-stylish retro ballroom for the dance was both sunken and had two steps going into it—no way I was wheeling in there. I was prepared for a long night of guilt-ridden friends coming up to chat to me at the top of the stairs, as people had done in high school and college. I even expected to “understand” when the friend would aim an apologetic smile at me and go off to do something more fun than fight to be heard over loud music or thumping bass. Over the years, I’d learned (continued...)

( continues...) to “understand” that a lot, though it never stopped stinging all the way.I was surprised when someone told me they moved the party so I could come. “We all go or nobody does.” That was eleven years ago now, but it still keeps me sticking with this humble message board, through shiny toys like twitter, fights, or just boredom from feeling that we know each others’ stories far too well now. I try never to forget one simple truth: Buffistas change the rooms.

Aww.