All aboard the Kaine Train!

you can order priority mail shipping boxes and envelopes in any size from store.usps.com for free. if you do not have a printer, you can buy them with the postage already paid on them. the postal service will deliver these boxes to your house. you can pack your item into the box at home, then go back to usps.com and schedule a time for the mailman to pick the package up from your house. this is also free. you do not have to visit the post office at any point in this process. if you use flat rate mailers you also do not need to weigh anything.

i have to explain this to people about 20 times a year, no joke. it is some sort of anti post office conspiracy that everyone thinks you have to buy shipping boxes and then drive to the post office and stand in line to mail things. you do not. shipping mailers and boxes are 100% free. priority mail service or above (and prices are now adjusted to the point that its usually pointless not to use priority mail) entitles you to a free pickup, and if you have even one priority mail package to ship, you can ask for all your other packages to be picked up on the same trip too.

if your without and you put nuts on it I don't make the rules snowflake

TRUCK

And I clutch the little warm tubes of blood and feel this sick person warming my hands and I think about how kind you might be and how I wish I could hold your hand and how badly, how really really badly, I want you to get better and stay warm and hold someone’s hand again.

And anyway sometimes it’s better to not think so vividly about the people I’m doing tests for. I’m a good little cog in a vast machine of people all trying to heal and cure, and my cog feels so fucking small sometimes. But I hope the blood I prepare for you helps you breathe better and laugh and wake up feeling well rested.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

I was severely injured years ago and couldn't stand or walk at all for a month, and needed a cane for six months after. Do you know how much that sucked? How difficult it was to get around? Go to the bathroom? How exhausting it was to strategize how to run errands and get places and do basic shit like catch transit? I never took those things for granted but holy shit was that experience eye opening. A total of two people held a door open for me. A *ton* of people eyed me skeptically. I had to be seated amongst the first of those boarding a plane and other passengers were furious. Those same people would also have been furious if they were stuck behind me as I slowly hobbled onto the plane with the main group.

No one would fake a disability. I mean, there might be someone out there trying it for unfathomable reasons, but humans are hugely independent creatures and deeply, deeply pressed by our culture to feel shame over not being able to do things alone. I think the idea that anyone is faking a disability is fucking ludicrous. Needing a mobility aid is painful and difficult and exhausting, both physically and mentally. You'd only use one if it made your life legitimately easier. If you're fully mobile, IT WOULD NOT BE EASIER.