By Big John Studd

There was a video/sensational sports story making the rounds last week about this kid. He’s a little league player with only one leg. Pretty amazing, huh? Truly inspiring and it makes you imagine what God had in mind when he created us all so very different. Actually, it makes me want to vomit all over my two shoes (which are connected to my two feet-suck it Pogo-kid!).

God screwed some people. It’s true and sure, it sucks. Some people have one leg. Some people are blind. Some are given red hair. Some have dial-up internet. It’s just how we were created. Of course, people can’t get over this so they always make a big deal of it when one of the less desirables does something great. Blind man bowls a 300 or gets a hole-in-one in golf, it’s front page news. Kid with autism hits a bunch of 3-pointers at the end of a blowout and people act like he invented the sport. Now, it’s kid with one leg who can play sports. Woo-hoo, kid, let’s try and see you make a MLB team like that. Hope your dreams don’t get crushed by reality. Maybe you actually can break the solo-leg barrier in MLB (spoiler alert: you can’t).

Sorry if this post makes me look like a dick, I guess I just get beaten down by the coverage these people get. They are supposed to be so “inspiring” but they really just make me feel worthless. Like, I have both of my legs, but this kid has a higher BA than I did? I’ve been playing golf for years (with excellent vision) and can barely get a birdie yet some guy who can’t get a newspaper from the end of his driveway without a guide dog can hit holes-in-one?

I’m sick and tired of all of these people making me feel like a waste of space. It’s a victory for me when I can remember to take my allergy medicine in the morning. I’m not exactly setting the world on fire. That’s a “me” problem, you say? Wrong, says I. Stories like this just perpetuate the myth that people with disabilities have talents far beyond those the mere full-bodied people possess.

I met a blind guy yesterday and asked him if he’d been playing a lot of golf lately and the crowd I was with just gasped, like I did something horribly wrong. WTF, I thought that’s all they did and now I’m the bad guy?! If I meet a kid with one leg and say to his dad, “wow, your boy must be some ball player” people will destroy me. But it’s the media’s fault because they perpetuate these blatant lies.

If you have to include these stories in your publications, fine. All I ask is that we get a little balance. Imagine how awful that blind guy who carries a 342 golf handicap feels when all he hears about blind people is that they are unreasonably accurate bowlers and incredible golfers. So for every “one-legged kid plays sports” story, we need one with the headline like “disabled kid finishes last in race.” For every story about blind people hitting holes-in-one, we need a story like “blind guy falls down stairs.”

Big John Studd is a writer for www.stolenlunchmoney.com. Studd and his merry band of literati tackle the major political and social issues of the day at Stolen Lunch Money and he can be reached at bigjohnstudd@stolenlunchmoney.com