I support our troops, but I'd never thought about joining them. I'd always been small and thin and not very strong, until I had a massive growth spurt a few years ago, and now I'm tall and thin and not very strong. Enlisting just didn't seem like something I could do, or that I wanted to do.
Until I was told that I couldn't. Then I spent several days seriously considering enlisting anyway just to fuck with everybody.
See, my school has this torturous thing called "Post-high planning day" where we were all required to mill around the gym for forty-five minutes while people with brochures gave us free pens and tried to convince us that their college was best.
I already knew where I wanted to go to college. I'd decided three years ago, but I was still required to do things like this. I was also required to take career aptitude and personality match-up tests twice a year every year even though I'd been saying I wanted to be a writer since sixth grade, because God forbid we not have our entire lives planned out by the time we graduate.
Anyway, I really didn't care, so I found some of my friends and trailed along behind them, half-listening to canned speeches on various colleges and collecting a lot of free pens. Until we got to the table advertising military service, where the representative mistakenly assumed I cared and asked me why I had a service dog. When I told him, he said I couldn't enlist. How could they ensure my meals would be safe? How could they get me medical attention if they weren't? How much use was I if I dropped dead in the barracks instead of out on the battlefield where I might at least be able to trip someone?
I don't like being told I can't do things. I don't think anyone does. So even though I understand perfectly the logic behind it, it still really pisses me off. And even though I, personally, never wanted to enlist in the first place, there's probably someone like me out there who did.
What I'm really angry about is that I can't even say it's discrimination because it fucking makes sense. I've got to admit, I'm a very complicated person to accommodate.
Just letting you know that somebody out there cares
ReplyDeletePerhaps you'll think it's silly, but I thought you'd appreciate this.
ReplyDeleteI'm a law student. I'm on the...um...super-long track, because my health has been really unpredictable and so on.
Anyhow, every year I go to the presentations the military does on becoming JAG-corps officers. And I make them verbally confirm that people with disabilities aren't welcome even in offices like JAG, where they aren't serving on anything that resembles a front line. Because I want everyone who is going to those presentations to hear that they're perfectly happy to discriminate against people like me even in jobs we could do.