Slumgullion #40 -- Let's Hear it for the Boys edition

Most disability bloggers seem to be women, but the mens got good things to say too:

"My guide dog is about to retire" by Damon at Do Your Worst:

My guide dog Liam, who I've had for seven and a half years, will be retiring at the end of this week. He's now nine years old. Liam is a bit of a stressy sensitive dog so this seems the best time to retire him.

So, what does this mean. It means that Damon has to go back to using a white cane - something he hasn't done since leaving school in 1991.

"The Pitfalls of Pity" by Gordon Cardona at Gordon's D-Zone:

It was when on the local newspapers and media I get to know that my best friend had received a prize for ‘helping his poor crippled friend’ (me that is). I was speechless and betrayed. At first I blamed my friend for it and said I wouldn’t trust him any more. But then I knew that it was all about the way society viewed people ‘like me’ that was the cause of it all.

I suddenly felt inferior and felt betrayed by my teachers, my schools and all the institutions that supported this prize. Sadly, this prize goes on every year and guess what? Non-disabled boys and girls still receive this prize for ‘being friends’ to their disabled ‘less fortunate’ friends.

Was it only last September that Mark Boatman at NodakWheeler escaped from a nursing home? The vent-using quadriplegic had to leave his home state to do it, but since he moved to neighboring Montana he's got a pet dog, seen The Rolling Stones in concert, and now he's heading off to college. Check out his adventures in the many photos he posts.

"On Being Married to Big Foot" by Stephen Kuusisto at Planet of the Blind:

She can clean dog hair off the kitchen floor in less than two minutes with her feet. This is a kind of domestic dancing that even the ancient and labyrinthine Gods and Goddesses of Knossos would take their hats off to, but of course they didn't have hats, which is probably why they died out if you stop and think about it.

"Livin’ la vida corta" by Michael Bérubé at Pandagon:

And I hope I haven’t given people the sense that everything is just wonderful with Jamie all the time, and that Down Syndrome isn’t such a big deal if you just take the Right Attitude. (There’s a little story in the DS community about how having a child with DS is like winding up in Holland when you’d planned to go to Italy, and while this story serves the crucial function of reassuring new parents that their lives are not ruined or blasted or just plain over, it’s really not a very good analogy, in the end.) There’s a reason why so many Jamie Stories involve me taking him on trips or playing golf with him or going to aquariums and zoos with him: it’s not like he has friends. Oh, people are mostly very nice to him, and kids greet him cheerily in school and in town, and his teachers and aides like working with him, because he’s a great kid. But he doesn’t have the kind of social network other fifteen-year-olds do; he doesn’t do sleepovers and play dates and just hanging out. (When Nick’s friends were here last month — and Nick’s friends are absolutely wonderful to Jamie — I told Jamie he could stay up until midnight and hang out with them. After a few minutes he came into my study, sat down, and said dejectedly, “I don’t know how to hang out.” I explained that he didn’t really have to do anything at all; he could just sit in Nick’s room and listen to what everyone was saying. But, of course, he was quite right. You have to know how to hang out before the invitation to hang out makes any sense.)