We were sat in Sainsburys cafe having lunch today.

One of the other customers whom we know brings her son in and he suffered a certain amount of brain damage in a car accident and so is sometimes a little louder than he might otherwise be. Lovely lad though, and sharp as a razor.

Today his Mum left him at a table whilst she went to the counter and he decided to have a singalong to himself.

Now, the chap opposite me had been there for a while and was clearly disabled in as much as he was in a wheelchair and, whilst being able to communicate and enunciate perfectly, if a little too loudly, was unable apparently to stop himself drooling.

He turned to look at the lad who was singing, and to my surprise, began cruelly to mimic the lad, followed by a comment about letting spackers (sic) out on their own.

I found that dreadfully sad.

As do I, Paul. 

Very sad, Paul, but also very ignorant. Persons with a disability deserve patience and respect. I have utter contempt for individuals who display such ridicule to people who would struggle to defend themselves adequately. Gratefully, it's the minority that behave like that.

Yes, I totally agree Andrew, but what made it worse for me was that the clown who was being nasty was clearly disabled himself. That's what I find so hard to believe, never mind accept?

Do you think the disabled man just had a quirky sense of humour and was maybe taking the pee out of himself aswell? My wife is disabled but is always cracking jokes about disability and the disabled, she does not mean any of it in a "nasty" way, she just has her sense of humour. I sometimes think it's a bit of a coping mechanism in that, if you don't laugh at yourself you'll only cry.

 

No I don't Phil,

I see precisely the point you are making, and agree that prima facie this may have been the situation. However, to put a little more meat on the bones

unfortunately we had to listen to the rest of his grand-standing, patronising, arrogant, puerile attitude. His bigoted, racist and sexist remarks were directed at anybody and everybody.

I'm fully aware of the use of controversial, self-denigratory humour as a coping mechanism, used it myself over the last few months in fact, and this was not it. This was just a thoroughly unlikable ignorant buffoon who seemed to be aware that his disability was a sort of passport to getting away with disgraceful behaviour in front of the fawning sycophants who were with him at their table.

The word "spacker", for example is, in my view, one of the vilest of epithets, and gives an indication of the baseness of the rest of his wide-ranging discriminatory diatribe.