I found the word "cripple" falling from my lips when explaining to a child what a buggy was doing driving down the middle of the airport corridor.
"It transports cripples and old people" - I blurted as we hurtled towards the Gate 19 - still under my own steam at this point thank-you very much, not riding the buggy yet.
I expected to be pulled up for being politically incorrect but I was wrong.
"What's crippled?" - was the child's response.
Well, there you go! - a little voice in my head exclaimed - Social engineering actually works.
The word "cripple" makes people cringe - it's so poignant and emotionally charged.
Well, not to this generation of little people. All those years of struggle to weed the word out of the vocabulary has actually worked.
And yes, the Oxford Dictionary says the term is no long acceptable as a noun referring to a person.
Disabled person is usually used instead.
I remember schoolyard bullies and jokers taunting kids with the word "cripple".
I'm betting the existence of golliwogs that this kind of behaviour still goes on today.
Has the extermination of "cripple" really changed society's perceptions?
A leopard doesn't change its spots and human beings aren't born gracious.
Can social engineering actually change the human race - not just the vocabulary?
Well, shortly after (as we wait for the plane) the kids are stretching their lips tight across their faces and laughing.
Offensive behaviour - racist behaviour - they were making fun of the shape of African people's lips.
A UNICEF poster featuring two African children was pasted on a bin - the poster was about poverty, the kids were on about appearances.
Social engineering can't breed out comparativism - the human race learns about itself and the world by comparing itself to everything.
(( And yes comparativism is a word - as is *antidisestablishmentarianism*.
I learned this word from the kids who explained that their friend found it in an advanced dictionary. ))
Civilization governs us with laws - it tries to cripple the basest qualities of human nature.
Reminds me of There Will Be Blood - starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
But you have to believe in something beyond the law when it comes to walking the walk : character is revealed in what we do when no one's watching.
Spirituality requires us to over-ride instinct it seems - and apparently people today apparently are hungry for spirituality. I'm not so sure about that either.
The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology dates the "noun" back to about 1200 as "crupel... related to cryppan to crook, bend.
It became a verb "to lame or disable" in 1694.
So it took us 810 years to decide that the word cripple causes hurt, discrimination and alienation - not people.
Interesting. Don't you think?