#criptime

“Because crip time is vampire time. It's the time of late nights and unconscious days, of life schedules lived out of sync with the waking, quotidian world. It means that sometimes the body confines us like a coffin, the boundary between life and death blurred with no end in sight. Like Buffy's Angel and True Blood's Bill, we live out of time, watching others' lives continue like clockwork while we lurk in the shadows. And like them, we can look deceptively, painfully young even while we age, weary to our bones. ..Like the leaves just now turning as the year spins toward its end, I want sometimes to be part of nature, to live within its time. But I don't. My life has turned another way. I live in crip time, now." - Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time, Ellen Samuels

Crip time is something that everyone in society needs to understand. When you get angry at someone for walking slowly in front of you, think that they might have an issue with their leg or their knee or whatever. I know when someone is driving very slowly in front of me and I pass them, I see that most times it is a disabled person or “crip.” Not everyone who is a crip does not drive slowly (because I consider myself disabled and I drive fast), but it definitely makes me not get angry at those who can’t help but drive slowly because they may not be able to process the signs or have the strength to put their foot down any harder. There are many different crips out there so society has to learn to respect those who need “crip time.” What exactly is crip time though? In Chapter One of Alison Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip, she explains what crip time is: “As one slang dictionary puts it, ‘crip time’ means both ‘a flexible standard for punctuality’ and ‘the extra time needed to arrive or accomplish something.’ This need for ‘extra’ time might result from a slower gait, a dependency on attendants (who might  themselves  be  running  late),  malfunctioning  equipment  (from  wheelchairs  to hearing aids), a bus driver who refuses to stop for a disabled passenger, or an ableist encounter with a stranger that throws one off schedule” (26). Some of the examples that she gives are less subtle ones that one might not realize. One example was a bus driver passing up a disabled person who is waiting to get on. This bus driver might simply not want to deal with lowering the ramp, adjusting the seats to allow a wheelchair and clipping the wheelchair in place. This is crip time due to the driver not wanting to take the time to stop and help the disabled because it takes too much time. Sound inconsiderate? Because it is. Society needs to step up and help those who might need it and/or not get impatient and irritated when one can’t comprehend or do other things as quickly as those who are abled. Those who are abled are simply spoiled.