May 4th, 2007

The next Post of the Week will be announced on Sunday evening. Please note that nominations for next week cannot be accepted until then.

1. Dad gone Mad/ Sweet

‘…As a parent, there are times when your life depends on taking a sunrise and sprinkling it with dew. Amid the insanity of refusals to bathe and the flow of tears over oatmeal that turned out too runny and the buzzkills from coitus interruptus, sometimes the chance to sneak into the kitchen and mow down a bite-sized Baby Ruth is the only thing standing between you and the ledge of a fortieth story window…’

2. Tired Dad/ Charity Shop

‘…my Saturday morning is filled with the attendance of Favourite Daughter’s ballet class and the necessary trawl around town that takes place afterward. Which includes the Charity Shop. And the Woman In The Charity Shop. Each Saturday she looks at her watch. And thinks to herself ‘Oooh that bleary-eyed man with the really beautiful little girl (she’s not his in my opinion) will be in soon’… ’

3. Growing Up With A Disability/ Sandbox Lessons

‘….children are not born racist, they must learn to be racist. I think that same truth applies to ableism. Children are not born believing that some differences make a person inferior; they have to be taught….’

4. The Perorations of Lady Bracknell/ The BADD entry 2007

‘…As soon as she came in, the mother was told she has the sort of smile which lights up a room. Now, she didn’t appear to have an unusually luminous and radiant smile to me (…) This comment strikes me as being exactly the kind of thing non-disabled people say to disabled people in the hopes that being complimented on something they still have/can do will make them feel much better about the things they no longer have/can do…’

5. Pandemian/ Opusculum

‘…the soiled feeling of a night spent with Will Self is much more palatable than the crushing disappointment of being led astray by Martin Amis only to find out, two books in, that he is a cad who keeps trophy knickers from his conquests in an Asda bag under the bed…’

6. Moving Right Along/ I’m really not trying to kill myself, honest

I am not suicidal. Notice I do not say that I have never felt like killing myself, or that I have never wished to die. I don’t wish to now. I have suffered crushing grief alarmingly frequently, have felt heart pain so intense and fear so grave and encompassing I wished the earth to open and swallow me or that I could dissolve into air without effort. It’s not the same thing as being suicidal.

7. City Wendy in the Windy City/ Hula-Hooping

‘….”I’m telling you you have to meet my friend,” Meg said.
This wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned this friend and how well she thought I’d like him.
“Why do you think I’ll like him so much? Does he have a big nose?”
“Yeah! And he’s really funny and nice and he’s creative too–he writes, and he had a comic strip for awhile, and he makes baby clothes!”
“Baby clothes? Is he gay?” I asked….’

8. Unreliable Witness/ Interview With A Demon

‘…because I never wanted to reveal the truth not to men in moustaches and men who wore glasses and the men who claimed I should be ashamed men who lied and spied and squandered and pondered on my life do you remember do you just cast your mind back for me a moment please a mere indulgence for an old adversary…'’

9. Our Albion/ You Should Never Apologise For Your Success, But…

‘…I stared, tried to nod a greeting, but after two days of travelling, my neck was not cooperating, so I just stared. And as I stared, he looked at me, and he deflated. He crumpled from inside, his shoulders slumped down and forward, his happy face caved into itself and he sat there, one of life’s failures, sitting on a wall, staring at the traffic…’

10. I hate the Earth/ Embarrassing Memory Compendium

‘…Another University tale. My family come down one weekend to take me out to lunch. I obliged, even if I’ve only just had my first real taste of independence and feel conspicuously awkward having to relinquish a bit of it. Back at my flat, and with four surly flatmates trying to watch TV, my Mum departs by yelling ‘Goodbye my little Honey-Bunny!’
The mocking I got from one flatmate in particular became downright hostile…’

11. Bitchy Jones Diary/ How To Look Good Humiliated

‘…for men who can do it – who get it - there’s a perfect kind of dignity in being degraded. A level of bravery that can offer the self as well as the skin. That can say, oh yeah, baby, I’m enough of a man crawl to you with my own belt in my mouth, to stand naked while you write slave across my chest, to kneel in front of you and tape my own mouth shut while you watch, to beg, to beg for water, beg for a touch, beg for pain, beg to push my tongue inside you, to be an animal, be an object, to be furniture, be ignored. To tell you that you own my tongue. To tell you that I love you after every stroke….’

12. Letters To Ed (from inside my head)/ Childishness and mere oblivion

‘…Head in his hands, rough old mans hands, calloused from gardening and sporting and life. Father becoming boy and my stomach twists. He stares at the floor. Broken dreams before us. The clock marks time…’