{"id":1095,"date":"2006-01-16T13:23:04","date_gmt":"2006-01-16T13:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1095"},"modified":"2006-01-16T13:23:04","modified_gmt":"2006-01-16T13:23:04","slug":"magic_bullet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1095","title":{"rendered":"Magic Bullet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, a Hamline student asked me, “If a pill existed that would make your disability suddenly disappear, would you take it?” I tried to answer honestly and said that I didn’t know. I tend to find such magical thinking not terribly helpful. It’s similar to asking a woman if she would take a pill to become a man. Or, dare I say it, asking a gay man if he would take a pill to become heterosexual. Would the pill really make life better for me, or simply more conventional?
\nBut the student’s question does get me thinking. To what extent does my disability influence my core identity? String theory<\/a> posits that our universe is but one of many. Suppose there’s a universe just next door with another version of me–a version of me whose DNA is barely distinguishable from my own, with the exception of a slightly different sequence on a certain chromosome. Would that Mark be an attorney or did he go into something else, like sales or medicine or banking? Is he married with kids and living in the suburbs? Is he still a geek or a total jock? Does he have the same temperament or is he kind of a dick? How recognizable would that version of me be to my friends and family in this universe?
\nThese are interesting questions, but it doesn’t change my own narrative. My disability and the rest of “me” are inextricably meshed and intertwined, pushing and pulling on each other in ways I’ll never completely appreciate or understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, a Hamline student asked me, “If a pill existed that would make your disability suddenly disappear, would you take it?” I tried to answer honestly and said that I didn’t know. I tend to find such magical thinking not terribly helpful. It’s similar to asking a woman if she would take a pill […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-hF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}