They tell me time is precious.
We have 1 life (not to botch), roughly 3 decades to reproduce (the family structure), 40 hours a week to make money, 24 hours in a day, 16 waking hours.
There’s no time to waste.
In those 16 hours we have to shower, eat, shave, shit, laugh, dress, buy, love, drive, drink, clean, mourn, write, and stress. We have to brownnose our bosses, save for the future, impress our colleagues, grow up, stay youthful, buy a house while interest is low, stay fit, keep in touch, pay off debts, invest, floss our teeth, and watch loved ones die.
So I’m told, life is short.
My response: to stutter whenever and wherever I can.
I like to be inconvenient.
See, the thing about time is that some people are allowed to take up more of it than others. Some people’s time (read: fancy businessmen and other good, privileged capitalists) is worth more than mine. Some people are rewarded for yammering on and lounging in time since their time is what makes the world spin. Disabled people, on the other hand, are taught from an early age to cram ourselves inside time, to take up as little space as possible, to not be a burden.
Part of our oppression as dysfluent speakers comes from being caught in this contradiction: our time is not valuable and yet we continue to www w.-ww-aaaaa—wwwww…. … to Wwwwwaa. WWW---waaaaaaste it, spending an extravagant amount of time sputtering consonants and screeching out vowels: far more than we have been allotted. We don’t just stutter away our lives, but (more tragically) the lives of colleagues, families, corporations, and governments.
I take a mischievous delight in being inconvenient.
I steal time that shouldn’t belong to me
from right underneath the businessman’s nose.
This doesn’t always work of course. Our ableist world is well-practised at depriving disabled people of time, dignity, and life.
Yet wherever and whenever possible—precisely when most inconvenient—we must stammer ourselves into the world, in protest and hope that we can reclaim what has always been ours.
Time was never a commodity--
It cannot be owned.
It must be squandered
together.
-Josh
We have 1 life (not to botch), roughly 3 decades to reproduce (the family structure), 40 hours a week to make money, 24 hours in a day, 16 waking hours.
There’s no time to waste.
In those 16 hours we have to shower, eat, shave, shit, laugh, dress, buy, love, drive, drink, clean, mourn, write, and stress. We have to brownnose our bosses, save for the future, impress our colleagues, grow up, stay youthful, buy a house while interest is low, stay fit, keep in touch, pay off debts, invest, floss our teeth, and watch loved ones die.
So I’m told, life is short.
My response: to stutter whenever and wherever I can.
I like to be inconvenient.
See, the thing about time is that some people are allowed to take up more of it than others. Some people’s time (read: fancy businessmen and other good, privileged capitalists) is worth more than mine. Some people are rewarded for yammering on and lounging in time since their time is what makes the world spin. Disabled people, on the other hand, are taught from an early age to cram ourselves inside time, to take up as little space as possible, to not be a burden.
Part of our oppression as dysfluent speakers comes from being caught in this contradiction: our time is not valuable and yet we continue to www w.-ww-aaaaa—wwwww…. … to Wwwwwaa. WWW---waaaaaaste it, spending an extravagant amount of time sputtering consonants and screeching out vowels: far more than we have been allotted. We don’t just stutter away our lives, but (more tragically) the lives of colleagues, families, corporations, and governments.
I take a mischievous delight in being inconvenient.
I steal time that shouldn’t belong to me
from right underneath the businessman’s nose.
This doesn’t always work of course. Our ableist world is well-practised at depriving disabled people of time, dignity, and life.
Yet wherever and whenever possible—precisely when most inconvenient—we must stammer ourselves into the world, in protest and hope that we can reclaim what has always been ours.
Time was never a commodity--
It cannot be owned.
It must be squandered
together.
-Josh
RSS Feed
