I wouldn’t say he deserves that “special response” either.
Yeah, people like to do that. He could be a hoax even. I’ve seen it happen - somebody likes to go around board pretending to be disabled or dying and then when he’s tired of the game he pretends a friend is posting to say he/she died. Kind of like that football player’s famous fake girlfriend. You never know.
Come on, you can’t accuse me of being an extremist and then say that attending college sometime in the 18 years between high school and 36 is the same as replicating the success of Mark Zuckerberg. Even for someone with a disability. If he were 22 and hadn’t finished college I would agree with you - there are extenuating circumstances here. But surely at some point he takes responsibility for his own future and his own failings.
You seem to want to just want his parents to hold his hand and say “there, there, whatever you can manage is fine!”. Well, obviously they disagree. And we have no idea whether or not they were aware of the nature of his disability when they adopted him. We have no idea whether or not they have been supporting him as an adult. All we know is that he doesn’t approve of the way they do it.
Oh, come now. Without blind, knee-jerk assumptions, the Internet wouldn’t exist. 
And what else are we supposed to do, if the OP chooses to withhold any further communication? We’re left to “assume” that he’s a lazy, spoiled, sympathy-trolling jerk who’s manipulating everyone, including his adoptive family, with his birth defect. That’s hardly a blind assumption anyway, because it happens all the time IRL and elsewhere – Occam’s Razor, etc.
What’s your stake in defending him, anyway?
I’ve met him. He really does use a wheelchair.
Well, I’m not really defending him, I’m sticking up for the general principle of not making assumptions without evidence, as I often do. (I know, it’s the Internet - my quest is doomed to failure).
But I do have a personal stake, as I am the father of a child with a disability, though she’s not yet an adult and her disabilities are mostly intellectual, not physical. So I know these things can be complex.
As such a dad, I’m on both sides here - I want to see people with disabilities given full access to education and jobs and such, and cut some slack, but on the other hand, I don’t want them coddled or pitied or given no expectations to help themselves either. So I strongly agree with PunditLisa and others that we should expect ambition and work from people with disabilities too, and not consider them weak or helpless and unable to do anything.
Well, that’s good to know. Thanks.
It’s rare that posters meet others in person in a forum like this.
That’s why we need more Dopefests.
One of the most pernicious things that kind of troll does is make others doubt legitimate claims of disability on line. It’s getting so if someone claims disability they have to surrender their privacy and provide proof. What next? Having to prove race, gender, educational credentials?
Actually, despite modern requirements for accommodation a disability still can interfere with success in college. I don’t know the details here, that’s part of the problem. Was there a financial issue? After all, we don’t know the financial situation and even etv78 may not really know what’s up with his parents. Did he have to drop for awhile for medical reasons and never get around to getting back?
As I have mentioned, my spouse has a milder form of the same birth defect with fewer problems than most. He has been hospitalized twice in the past 10 years due to on-going problems resulting from this birth defect. It sure as hell interfered with his schooling - 5 years slogging through high school because of all the time he missed due to medical problems, which is why he took his GED instead of a sixth year. Six years to get a four year degree, same reasons. It has and continues to interfere with his ability to make a living. I can only assume that etv78 has similar on-going problems only to a greater degree. Does that make it impossible to get a degree? Certainly not - but it does make it much harder. Add in a less than perfect grade point, maybe some financial problems, and I can see where college doesn’t get finished.
There are numerous reasons people don’t finish college and they don’t all come down to “lazy”. Without more information we just can’t know.
Spina bifida occurs within 8 weeks of conception. The kid is born with his spinal column hanging out through hole where the base of his spine doesn’t form properly, and may even be exposed to open air. The scar the results from surgical repair is pretty obvious, I mean, even if you were completely blind you’d have no trouble feeling it. Oh, and given he’s paralyzed the lack of movement in his lower limbs would have been pretty obvious.
There is no way they couldn’t have known the kid was disabled when they adopted. I mean, seriously, you get a new baby that has no movement in his lower legs and a four inch scar across his back (that’s the size of my spouse’s scar) and you don’t notice that maybe the kid is a little different than normal?
Until he got his own apartment, which was fairly recently, I believe he was living at home so they were supporting him at least with housing.
Personally, I think it would do him some good to do something, get a part-time time of some sort, but it’s not like he can start shoveling snow for pocket change.
The problem is that when your kid goes to apply for work she’s going to slam right into people who DO consider the disabled weak, helpless, and unable to do anything and will not hire her no matter how qualified. Not everyone, no, but it’s foolish, if not cruel, to pretend that sort of prejudice doesn’t exist even if it’s no longer legal to discriminate.
Oh, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. And it exists in part because it’s an easy trap to fall into. People with disabilities can’t do certain things, and it’s too easy to just ignore or fail to find out what they can do, or make an effort to accommodate them so the disabilities aren’t barriers.
Yeah, but those aren’t exactly things he can blame on his dad, are they?
And that’s where I think you and a lot of posters are talking past each other. You’re right, it absolutely is harder for people with medical problems to get through school and get/keep jobs. But the people you’re arguing with are also right, because etv78 is stating outright that he could have finished school a decade ago if it weren’t for [del]those meddling kids[/del] his horrible, selfish father. If he thinks he could have gotten through grad school a decade ago, then he clearly considers his disability something that’s entirely surmountable in a college setting.*
I think you’re also talking past one another on the whole job front, too. Yeah, it’s crazy hard out there right now, and has been the past few years. But right now and the last few years aren’t the entirety of his adult life–there were a lot of years when he was a grown-ass adult that it wasn’t hard out there at all. There might not have been an overload of good, long-term career type jobs out there, but getting a job in retail or data entry was pretty much a matter of showing up for the interview sober and not wearing underpants on your head. (There were a few places that I’m not sure would have cared that much about the underpants.) Hell, Walmart was actively looking for disabled people to hire as greeters. It being hard out there now doesn’t explain not ever having a job then.
*All disabilities, their effects, and how surmountable they may be are highly individual. Statements made about one individual case do not apply to other individual cases. Void where prohibited. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
I’m just a little bummed that none of my vague, whiny, content-less posts ever inspire 2 pages worth of responses here. I need to step up my game.
Be sure to list all the special conditions that make your whine of particularly sympathy-inducing vintage. Nobody gives no fline fook about the problems of the unafflicted.
Needs more cowbell.
When I said they may or may not have known about the nature of his disability, I meant they may not have known that he would need support into adulthood, since you were saying that they should have been warned of that.
Yes, well put, thank you. Nobody is denying that medical problems or other issues can make life harder and delay various accomplishments. But just throwing your hands up and saying “well, everything is too difficult for him, poor baby” is just infantalizing and silly. He has said himself that the only reason he doesn’t have that coveted masters degree is because of his evil father, and he has admitted that he got himself kicked out of university in the past because of his own transgressions. I have no idea why some posters continue to defend him as though we’re all just mocking him for being disabled.
**Broomstick **- I can see that you’re very invested in painting etv (and therefore your husband, and by extension yourself) as just hapless victims of circumstance. But you’ve gone way beyond giving him a little of the benefit of the doubt and you’ve moved into a ridiculous kneejerk ‘but guys, he’s disabled, don’t you get it?’ cycle. At this point you’re not listening to what anyone else is saying, even the OP.
Circling back… “bladder incident”?
We both agree on that - they should have been warned about that.
Except I’m NOT saying that. I have stated more than once in this thread that he bears some responsibility and would be better off working. But hey, go ahead and paint me as more extremist than I actually am.
Clearly, if you think I’m 100% sympathetic you aren’t reading what I’m writing, either.
Excuse me, I particularly take exception to this line. Neither my spouse nor I are helpless and characterizing him as a “victim of circumstance” is especially insulting. He has a long list of accomplishments that anyone would be proud of, those didn’t happen by chance or “circumstance”.
Yours is a good example of the sort of binary thinking I object to. You seem to have a notion that someone disabled has to be either/or. In fact, my spouse is both very able and very disabled at the same time. There is also the problem that prejudice against the disabled is VERY real and there is little any disabled person can do about it. “Hapless victims of circumstance”? No - victims of prejudice and unjustified bias in many cases. Which is why my spouse has had much more luck as an entrepreneur than as an employee. 90% of what held him back in the work world was the attitude of other people who made kneejerk judgements about him based on how he walked or what he couldn’t do that wasn’t relevant to the job.
This thread is the internet version of leaving a flaming bag of dogshit on someone’s porch, ringing the doorbell, then running and hiding…
…Watching with glee as the residents of the house, and the neighbors, are at first miffled, confused, angry, accusing, and just generally making a big deal about it and each other.
I think if he really wanted sympathy, he would have been intelligent enough to craft his thread in such a way to make him look sympathetic (whether it were true or not) explaining details thoroughly enough people aren’t going to keep pressing him for more information or pointing out hypocritical parts of his dialogue.
Well, yeah, but what else has he got to do all day besides provoke a show?