Denied the Right to Enroll in Stressful Classes
from Beverly K.

Just found your site via a letter from NPF.  Laughed my rear off going through the list.  Great material!  Thanks for providing a more humorous look at P.

FYI, I’ve had P for about 30 years.  I’m 61 now and have learned over the years that if people don’t like my P it’s THEIR problem.  Living as I do in the buckle of the  Bible belt, I get hit with condemning Christians all the time.  If you’d just accept Jesus … God is trying to tell you something … You have the mark of Cain…etc. ad nauseam.    

The people who try to get to me the most are the morons who just KNOW that if I tried this food supplement or that concoction my P would clear up in a few days.  What about PERMANENT don’t those folks comprehend?

The Texas Rehabilitation Commission refused to allow me to attend some college classes several years ago because “stress causes that problem.”   They wanted to put me in a class that would teach me how to do filing.  FILING?  What made them think that a person with a Ph.D. needed to learn the alphabet?  Oh well, Ph.D. just means purveyor of hot dogs, eh?

Again, thanks for your site.  I’ve bookmarked it and will return and return and…  -Beverly K.

*****

Ed’s response:  Oh Beverly, you’ve touched one of my hot buttons.  Yes, we flakers do tend to upset the fundamental Judaeo-Christian applecart, don’t we?  I’ve threads into the Bible belt, and fundamental Christianity, running through both sides of my family, and I know what a test it can be to look unhealthy without behaving like you’re sick.  Everyone who encounters us looks for or imagines reasons why we might be the way we are.  When they are ignorant about P they can come up with some real interesting suppositions (the “Don’t Say This” list here is full of them).  When they are religious fundamentalists who happen to be ignorant about P their suppositions frequently involve sin.  I oscillate between wanting to soundly thrash these people when they decide to help me, or, on the other hand, looking forward to the encounters for all the fun I’m going to have.  Brothers, I am blessed!  Truly!  The Lord has allowed me to wear my sins on the outside as a witness for all the world.  Look at me brothers!  Take me in to your eyes and your heart!  Let me be a lesson to you!  Do not seek to Know your domestic farm animals....  Well, you get my drift.

I’m almost as vicious toward those who can cure me with unremarkable remedies and concoctions.  I have a story. 

I knew a man who had a five-day rash.  He’d broken out head to toe and was going crazy from the itch.  On the first day he tried Witch Hazel and it didn’t work.  On the second day he smeared himself with Aloe-Vera extract and it didn’t work.  On the third day he bathed in oatmeal in the morning and vinegar at night and this didn’t work.  On the fourth day he bought and wore new clothes with magnets sewn into the fabric everywhere, but his rash persisted.  On the fifth day he changed his diet by eating tuna for breakfast, lunch and dinner and, on the morning of the sixth day he woke to find himself cured.  It is proved, then, that eating tuna is the cure for a five-day rash.

Unfortunately, P isn’t a five-day rash.

But back to your email.  I think the Texas Rehabilitation Commission needs an overhaul.  Tell me, did your run-in with them occur while George Bush was Governor? -Ed

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