Emily Ladau:
Hi, I’m Emily Ladau.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And I am Kyle Khachadurian.

Emily Ladau:
And you’re listening to another episode of The Accessible Stall.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Emily, what are we going to talk about today?

Emily Ladau:
Well, here’s the thing. We’re going to talk about spontaneity, but also this was a spontaneous episode. So before we are spontaneous, super chill, that’s us, disabled people are super spontaneous and chill, can we just do a little PSA for what’s going on in the world?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, the big beautiful bill is not beautiful. It is big and it is a bill, but it’s not beautiful. It cuts so many things, including Medicaid for so many millions of Americans. It does directly impact disabled people, but it also probably indirectly impacts you because Medicaid touches a lot of things directly and indirectly, even if you don’t use it, like myself. So if you like us at all, please call your congressman and tell them to not support that bill. Although as we’re recording this, it might die in the Senate. So maybe that doesn’t matter, but you should still do it anyway. You should thank them for having not supported the bill if it ends up dying.

Emily Ladau:
So where do I even start, because I have thought that I don’t want to make this whole episode about this? But I am, first of all, a previous Medicaid beneficiary. I am someone who did use to receive Medicaid support, and that was essential for me and for my well-being. And also, I wrote about this in my Substack because now I’m one of those girlies who has…

Kyle Khachadurian:
Who has a Substack?

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, I just made it literally yesterday.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I’m so mad at you. How dare you? Oh, yesterday? Okay.

Emily Ladau:
Yesterday, I just haven’t told you yet.

Kyle Khachadurian:
This is how I find out that Emily Ladau has a Substack.

Emily Ladau:
Had a Mailchimp.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes, I’m very subscribed to that, thanks.

Emily Ladau:
I know, but now we’re on Substack. We’ve moved.

Kyle Khachadurian:
It’s funny to me that that is popular now because the benefit of email is you don’t have to go to it other than when you go to it to check your email, but you have to actively go to somebody’s Substack. So I just find that extra step, I don’t find that annoying, but I imagine that that extra friction would turn off some people. But I am clearly wrong about that because it has taken over the world.

Emily Ladau:
It’s like how we used to have TV with commercials, and so then we got the DVR so that we could fast-forward commercials, and then the DVR switched to streaming so that we could avoid commercials all together. And then streaming added commercials, and so now we can’t skip commercials, and we have just come full circle.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Full commercial.

Emily Ladau:
Anyway, what was I even saying? Yeah, I made a Substack yesterday. This was a thinly-veiled plug for it, but also for real, real. I talked about the fact that the conservatives continue to throw around the terms waste, fraud, and abuse. And if I hear that one more time, I am just going to absolutely scream because the waste, the fraud, and the abuse is not coming from the people who need Medicaid to simply survive.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You don’t say.

Emily Ladau:
Oh, God. Yeah, I know. I know we’re preaching to the choir. I think that’s the thing that drives me nuts is that we end up doing so much of this in a bubble. But if listening to this motivates you at all to send a message to your representatives or to make a phone call, please do.

Kyle Khachadurian:
The cruelty is the point. It’s always been the point, and it will always be the point, because well, we all are going to die, aren’t we?

Emily Ladau:
Okay, look, I know we need to talk about being spontaneous, but this is hilarious.

Kyle Khachadurian:
To be fair, this is spontaneous.

Emily Ladau:
It is, yeah. But first I also need to say Joni Ernst needs to take a good hard look at herself because…Here’s the thing. Of course we’re all going to die, but what if we set ourselves up for success so that that wasn’t an immediate and looming reality? Wow.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, we’re all going to die, so who cares when anything? Climate change is a hoax, so why bother trying to save the earth? Everything’s going to turn to dust at some point, so why do anything? Why don’t we all just ourselves? We’re all going to die anyway.

Emily Ladau:
Kyle’s kidding, in case we need to underscore the sarcasm.

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, part was a joke, but really, go yourself, not you.

Emily Ladau:
No, no, no, no, no. I’m saying you were joking about climate change being a hoax and all of that.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no, sorry. Thank you.

Emily Ladau:
Don’t worry. I feel like the joking is implied, but do you ever worry that someone’s just going to take a clip of you just being like, “Climate change is a hoax?”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Not just a clip, I worry about that with people in my life that know me. I’m like, “Oh, what if they misunderstand me and then hate me now?” That’s a constant. That is genuinely part of the reason I’m in therapy is to deal with that. And it’s a lot better. But what it has done for me most of all is recognize that it’s there, which, although helpful, is so annoying because now I’m annoyed at myself. I’m like, “God, why do I think that?” I couldn’t tell you.

Emily Ladau:
And now, this is an episode about why everybody needs therapy.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, yeah, everyone does. And if you say you don’t, you especially do.

Emily Ladau:
I 100% am pro-therapy. I’m also a little biased because I’m marrying a therapist.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You were doing that. You were in therapy before, right?

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, absolutely.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That would be wild if you was like, “Oh, no, no, no, no, he convinced me, and he was right.”

Emily Ladau:
No, no, no, I’ve been in therapy since I was little on and off. We as disabled humans need therapy because the world is a lot to deal with. And anyway, can we somehow turn that into the transition about spontaneity? You know what’s funny? I don’t even know how to be spontaneous about this. I’m like, “Let me plan my verbal transition to talk about being spontaneous.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Are you telling me that you thought about saying that? That was pretty spontaneous to me, Emily. We as disabled, but the point you made earlier, which I’ve already forgotten, so please remind me of what you just said, is the point, is that we have to plan for everything, and the world is overwhelming. And so we, as a group of people, really can’t be spontaneous in the way that your average non-disabled person can.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. I think about this all the time because I have been really avoiding travel this year. Other than things that I can get on a train for, I’m just refusing to get on an airplane. And I know that getting on an airplane in and of itself is not particularly spontaneous, although there are people who just jet set for a weekend. But I think in general, I am realizing that I am feeling more and more uncomfortable with going out of my comfort zone, of course. You’re like, “Okay, yeah.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
You don’t say.

Emily Ladau:
But my point being that I was willing to push myself beyond my comfort zone a lot more than I am now because I’m just constantly concerned that something is going to go wrong, or I’m going to run into some form of inaccessibility, or my body is just going to rebel against me. And to be honest with you, as much as accessibility is a concern right now, another part of my disability that I don’t really talk about too much, but it’s separate from my primary diagnosis, if you want to call it that, is that I have a ton of GI issues. And so I am more concerned these days about spontaneity because I don’t know when my stomach is going to decide that that’s not happening.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Never leave the house without Imodium.

Emily Ladau:
It’s true. It’s true.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I was talking about me.

Emily Ladau:
Planning in advance has just become so anxiety-inducing for me to the point that if I am going somewhere, I do go places that don’t have a wheelchair accessible bathroom, sometimes, because I have no choice. And because of that, I have now had to start creating contingency plans of like, okay, well, there’s a library nearby where I can go to the bathroom. There’s a Starbucks nearby where I can go to the bathroom. And I know that when you go into a business, you’re supposed to buy something before you use the bathroom. So I know that I made someone at Panera very unhappy. But also, this is the planning that I have to do now. I can’t just pick up and go, I need to know what my contingency plan is.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yep. It’s funny, it’s not ha-ha funny, it’s more like interesting funny, but this is one of those areas as someone who is differently disabled than you-

Emily Ladau:
Oh my God, I thought you were going to say differently abled than me.

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, I actually almost did by mistake. That’s why I paused because I literally was like, “Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.” You know what it is? It’s literally like when you’re in fifth grade and you’re reading in your science class and you see the word organism. And you’re like, “Don’t say it. Don’t say it.”

Emily Ladau:
Oh, you’re like, “Don’t say orgasm?”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes, exactly. You got it. In that the whole concept of pee math, or I’m going to use the non-abbreviated version of it because I don’t think we should make this joke, but crippled people time.

Emily Ladau:
Not going to lie to you, the first thing that came up for me was current procedural terminology from the American Medical Association.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Hell yeah.

Emily Ladau:
So perhaps my Google-

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s exactly what it is.

Emily Ladau:
Cognitive processing therapy.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Anyway, my point is that it’s one of those things that skipped me because I have a lot more privilege than… It is privilege, but that’s not the word. Here, it’s more like literal ability, physicality in that I can, physically speaking, afford to be a little bit more spontaneous in the way that you can’t.

Emily Ladau:
Spontaneous.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Spontaneous, in that a lot of the things that you need to be accessible are things that I just don’t. Having said that though, I’m still a lot slower, and I still get tired easier. And those are things that you have to think about. None of us as disabled people can just do anything, unless maybe we’re at home, and even that’s not true for a lot of us.

Emily Ladau:
I actually really like how you summed that up. It’s like we can’t just do it. Nike doesn’t work for us.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Truly.

Emily Ladau:
But yeah, in all sincerity, everything requires some level of preparedness from me, even if it’s just mental preparedness, the amount of times that I have to talk myself into getting up.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. Let’s talk about it, because same.

Emily Ladau:
Okay, I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, and I know that that’s the question that they ask you to determine if you are depressed, but this is not a depression thing.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I was just going to ask you, do you mean physically, or is it just-

Emily Ladau:
Physically and mentally, but not because I am mentally unwell at the moment, because literally getting up is just so painful after a night of laying down that my body is like, I cannot handle this. I cannot take this. And so then I have to psych myself out to get up. And they say that you’re not supposed to do work, answer emails or stuff in bed, but honestly, I sit there and check my phone before I get out of bed and answer emails if I can, because it means I don’t have to immediately get up.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. Unrelated to the topic, but tangentially related to something we were saying earlier, is when my therapist does screenings, one of the things he asks is, “Have you had trouble falling or staying asleep?” And I sleep very well regularly and well when I do it, but sometimes I have bad pain days that keep me up. And so occasionally, I have to be like, “No, but not for the reasons you’re asking, I promise.”

Emily Ladau:
Yeah. No, that’s so true.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Or I’m sorry, “Yes, I am having trouble, but it very much is not for the reasons you think.”

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And also, I like to make the joke sometimes that disabled people are often seen as inspirational just for getting out of bed in the morning.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh my God, if they only know how true that was, sometimes.

Emily Ladau:
Literally, the only reason that you should find me inspirational for getting out of bed in the morning is if you know that I am not a morning person and my body is in pain, then you should really be very proud of me that I sat up this morning.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I am a morning person. It’s a curse, dude. I hate it.

Emily Ladau:
Disgusting. Why? I’m also marrying a morning person.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I was going to say, well, she’s also a morning person.

Emily Ladau:
No, I don’t support it, I don’t agree with it. That is not a viewpoint I can condone. The morning is terrible, and that’s bad. But anyway, yeah, so spontaneity, I just cannot spring into action for anything. There is nothing I can do to get my body to physically go faster than it is going to go. And so that in and of itself does not lend itself to spontaneity because somebody’s like, “Oh my God, let’s do this thing.” And I’m like, “It’s going to take me an hour to get ready.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
But honestly, it’s going to take me an hour to get ready. Relative to a disabled existence, that is pretty spontaneous, man, because usually, it’s like, oh, that takes four to seven business days, I got to research where we’re going. I got to see if the food matches my dietary restrictions. I got to see if there’s a route that goes there, or if there’s construction that day in my path.

Emily Ladau:
Oh, the construction thing is actually such a valid point. I know you were just coming up with random examples, but here’s a perfect example.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I was, but yeah, go ahead.

Emily Ladau:
So I am really lucky that the place that I go to physical therapy right now is in rolling distance from my apartment. But they have been creating new apartment buildings, and they’re doing some construction related to that. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing, but they keep expanding the roadblocks. And so it used to be that I could literally leave my apartment 10, 15 minutes before my appointment and be there in plenty of time. And so far, the last couple of weeks that I’ve gone, the construction keeps increasing. So I have to keep planning to leave earlier and earlier because I literally can’t get through. And it blocks everybody, but what I’m saying is yesterday, I discovered that they were blocking multiple curb cuts. So whereas everybody else could just step up on the curb and walk on the grass, I had to reroute myself so that I could find a curb cut. And it added probably an extra five minutes, which in the grand scheme of things, not that much. And people like to make fun of me that I should just leave earlier anyway because I’m a perpetually slow and vaguely late person for certain things.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Wait. Well, no, finish your point, because I want to talk about this.

Emily Ladau:
No, that is my point. I constantly am having to plan for how accessibility is going to be blocked off for me. I have to get to a place earlier because I need to find accessible parking. I need to find the accessible entrance, the path. It’s a whole thing.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, you are perpetually late. And the reasons you described are why I am always early for everything. And it’s unfortunately a true stereotype for me. But it’s for those reasons though. And so it was a little surprising when you said, “Oh, I’m a little bit late for things,” because I wouldn’t say that about you.

Emily Ladau:
Well, it’s more I leave later than I should.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emily Ladau:
I definitely cut it closer than I should. I am not late in terms of actually showing up for things, but I don’t factor in as much time as I should for accessibility issues. And it’s unfair because I don’t feel like I should have to.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I agree.

Emily Ladau:
So my family always tells me, “Get up a half an hour earlier so that we can leave a half an hour earlier so that we can be there a half an hour earlier.” And I’m like, “This is not fair because if we didn’t have to deal with these accessibility issues, I wouldn’t have to force myself out of bed a half an hour earlier and leave a half an hour earlier.” And so yeah, that’s my beef with that.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I have a question.

Emily Ladau:
What?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Is your mom the same way? No, is she chronically early?

Emily Ladau:
Not chronically early, but certainly more on top of it than I am.

Kyle Khachadurian:
All right, all right. Okay. The right way.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, she definitely got it more in her control than I do. And honestly, my partner is so much more on top of it than I am. If he knows that there’s going to be issues, he’s like, “Yeah, we’re leaving this early.” He’s also taken to telling me a different time. So he’ll be like, “Yeah, we’re leaving at 4:15,” but we’re actually leaving at 4:45.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s so good.

Emily Ladau:
So yeah, I am who I am, unless I am getting on an airplane, which I, again, am refusing to do this year. But I am like three hours early for my flight.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, no. If an airports involved, I just move in. I’m just like, “I live here for the next-”

Emily Ladau:
Exactly. I’m like, “This is my home now.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, because airports suck man. Airports, you got somebody drinking whiskey in their pajamas at six A.M. because they’re on their connecting flight. Airports are a liminal space with human existence in the same way that elevators are, except they’re much larger.

Emily Ladau:
Wait, can you explain to me how an elevator is a liminal space of human existence? I think I get you.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Because your normal social norms, especially ones pertaining to personal space, obviously because it’s tiny, it just doesn’t apply. It just doesn’t apply. The worst thing you can do in an elevator is stand the wrong way. And for some reason, even though that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do, is frowned upon. There’s a very specific subset of ways you have to behave in an elevator and an airport that you just don’t in any other capacity when there’s people around you.

Emily Ladau:
I got to tell you, having an elevator to myself is such a gift because I love not being in close proximity to people, first of all. And second of all, I also sometimes need the elevator to blow my nose or just take a second and regroup myself. And I don’t want people in there.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I was almost stuck in an elevator yesterday, or not yesterday, sorry, on Tuesday. And I got in there with a building mate. She was already in the elevator. Oh, no, no, no, sorry, we were both going in from the ground. And she pressed my floor, and she pressed her floor, and it went right past me, and it kept going. And she looked at me, and she was like, “I pressed it. I pressed three, I swear.” I was like, “I saw you, it’s fine. We’ll just ride it up to your floor.” And then it got real slow, and then she started flipping out. And I was like, “You cannot be the one freaking out, because I can’t be the calm one.” And then because you know how when you use an elevator, it’s really fast, and then when you get close to where you’re going, it slows down so you don’t get jolted everywhere?
It was the opposite. It got slower, the higher we got. It was just so weird. And then I got out of the elevator. And then she was like, “Hey, by the way, I have gotten stuck in that one before. Have a good night.” And I was like, “Oh, man. Now, see, that was a fluke, and now I’m never going to use an elevator again.” So now my building has one elevator, even though there’s two. I don’t care. That one is not ever going to make be used by [inaudible 00:22:58]. Sorry, that was a tangent, but I just felt like you needed to know that.

Emily Ladau:
No, speaking of elevator related tangents, for all of my life, pretty much, I lived in a place where I did not need an elevator to get in and out in a house. And then now that I’m in an apartment building, in the past few years, I’ve had an elevator outage where all of the elevators were out, and I couldn’t get out of the apartment. And then I had a situation in my current apartment where there was a power outage. And I was in full freak out mode because I can’t charge my power chair, I can’t get out of the building. What am I going to do? And it turns out, this apartment actually has a generator. That means that there are operating elevators, even in case of a power failure. But still, you have to plan for broken elevators. What don’t you have to plan for the disabled person?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Wait, that’s a really good question. Let’s try to figure that out. What don’t you have to plan for? I genuinely don’t think there is an answer.

Emily Ladau:
I am quite literally trying to prevent myself from sitting in silence while I ponder it because people are listening to us talking, but I’m like [inaudible 00:24:25] an answer.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Well, no. Okay. Well, okay. If you figure something out by the end of the episode, let me know, because I don’t think I can. I don’t think there is one. And if anyone listening knows an answer to that, let us know, because I maintain that there is not one. But I would love to be proven wrong.

Emily Ladau:
It’s very much that whole mindset of hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. That’s what you do. Don’t you do that? That’s everything.

Emily Ladau:
Absolutely. I don’t think that we have a choice. I really am so stumped. That would be a million-dollar question on who wants to be a millionaire? What don’t disabled people have to plan for?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Trick question, the answer is E, nothing. We have to plan for everything.

Emily Ladau:
Oh my God. Yeah. And sometimes, the access issues are just so absurd. I’m trying to think of a good example. I don’t know.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I have one. And I would not say that this is a way we get to be spontaneous because it comes due to all the reasons we’ve been talking about for the past half hour, but I will say, it’s technically spontaneous. And that is when you have planned for something and you come across something at your destination that you didn’t think about, so you have to think about a solution right there on the spot. And my example for that, the one that I encounter most of all and have most recently, is a high bar stool, because I can get up on those, but no one wants to see that, and I don’t want to do it, I look like a clown.
And I’d just rather stand. I really would. I’d rather stand, because they never go back. So it’s like I’m supported legally. If you were to write whatever the legal definition of a seat is, it is that. But that’s all it is. But in that scenario, you have to think about a solution in the moment. So that’s spontaneous. But that’s not really true, is it, because it comes at the cost of not being able to just, in my instance, sit in the chair in the first place?

Emily Ladau:
Well, it’s like you’re flipping the script, but is that spontaneity or is that adaptability?

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, I would say it’s adaptability. Huh?

Emily Ladau:
Are those two things synonymous with one another?

Kyle Khachadurian:
In this scenario, I would say it is. But I would say that despite that being technically true, it does violate the spirit of what we’ve been saying, even though it’s correct.

Emily Ladau:
Spontaneity would be being able to go with the flow. And adaptability is also going with the flow, but you’re more so having to use your brain to navigate coming up with a solution.

Kyle Khachadurian:
It’s proactive versus reactive.

Emily Ladau:
Yes, that’s a great way to explain it. For sure. For sure. And yeah, the high bar stools are a thing for a lot of my disabled friends, the high top tables in general. And the interesting thing I think is, correct me if I’m wrong, but when we were younger, I feel like those were not a thing. Other than sitting at an actual bar, I don’t recall going to restaurants with high tops.

Kyle Khachadurian:
No, I think you’re a hundred percent right. And it’s like for what? You can get more tables in your restaurant because the tables are smaller. But that sucks because you have to put food on them. It’s not just people sitting. Food takes up space. I hate it. I agree with you.

Emily Ladau:
It’s like unlocking a memory for me that back in the early days of my social media and communications career, I worked for a woman who was running a campaign called Drop the High Tops, and her whole thing was about getting restaurants to get rid of high top tables. Great campaign, didn’t really take off too much because I think that restaurants just don’t care.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I would do that for free.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, no, free [inaudible 00:28:41].

Kyle Khachadurian:
[inaudible 00:28:41] hire that.

Emily Ladau:
But it’s so true that when I’m rolling around in a town or something like that and trying to find somewhere to eat, that’s me being slightly spontaneous, flexible, adaptable, because I’m like, “Oh, we’ll find somewhere. No worries.” But then I’m having to be like, “Well, does this place have a step? Does this place have a place where I can pull my wheelchair in for accessible seating? Can I go to the bathroom here?” So I can go with the flow, but there’s a lot of mental gymnastics behind it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. And I think that is, and we have definitely talked about this in some way or another throughout this entire time we’ve been doing the show, but it always bears repeating because I don’t think it’s possible for someone who’s not disabled to understand how mentally exhausting it is to be any kind of disabled, because you just have to think in ways that people who don’t have disabilities or chronic illnesses, or even a long-term injury that eventually heals and you get back to being fully able-bodied, in that scenario, you’re using your brain in ways that you just didn’t have to. And we don’t have a choice. It would be such a privilege and an honor, frankly, to just be able to relax in a way that Emily and I have not been able to since the moment we’ve been born.

Emily Ladau:
I am a hundred percent certain that we’ve talked about this before, but it’s going into that conversation of, would you take a pill to cure your disability? And it’s like there’s so much about it that I would not want to change, like my community and my friends and my work, and that’s amazing. But if someone would give me a pill where my body didn’t hurt and I didn’t have to worry about freaking out about accessibility everywhere, heck yeah, give me that.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s the worst part about being disabled. It is. I’m sorry. I know that’s the whole crux, or not crux, but the whole point of the social model of disability, but it’s true. Well, except for pain, but just the world not being accessible is genuinely the worst part, for the most part. There are exceptions.

Emily Ladau:
Well, the whole thing with the social model of disability is that it’s not just about barriers because there’s no change to a physical or environmental barrier that is also going to help me If I am having chronic pain or GI issues. It may make it easier for me to get to the bathroom. It may make it easier for me to find somewhere where I can rest and take a break, but it’s not changing the signals that are going off in my body. So as much as accessibility would improve my willingness and ability to be spontaneous, there are just certain things about my body that don’t allow for it. And that’s not going to change regardless of how accessible the world becomes. And I’m not using that as any free pass for people because absolutely make the world more accessible, but the ADA is not legislation that is going to change the circumstances of my body.

Kyle Khachadurian:
How unfortunate that is. If only.

Emily Ladau:
If only.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Man, imagine if disabilities could be legislated away. Wow, that would be a little absurd. That would almost of be, in a weird way that is not related to anything happening at all in the world at the moment, imagine for a second how ridiculous that would be. That would be like if you tried to legislate away, I don’t know, let’s say trans people, for instance. Who would do such a stupid thing like that?

Emily Ladau:
Or the whole thing with vaccines…

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh, yeah.

Emily Ladau:
… Because we don’t want more autistic people, even though eliminating vaccines creates more disability.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Everyone knows that autism is worse than smallpox. When I was a kid, I used to watch Penn and Teller bullshit at a very [inaudible 00:33:22] age, and they have a lot of bad opinions on that show. But one of the things that, and I’ll link this because it’s so relevant to this, and also the world right now, they did an episode on vaccines, and they debunked, as they should, the myth that vaccines cause autism. And in their opening scene, what they did was they had a bunch of bowling pins, and they tossed bowling balls at it or little balls at it to knock them over, and that was not being vaccinated.
And then for being vaccinated, they put a glass thing in front of it so that the balls would bounce off the glass, and that only one or two pins would get the thing. And at the end, he said, “Even if vaccines did cause autism,” which they don’t, “It still wouldn’t be as bad as Smallpox,” and all the other things that vaccines prevent against. And I’ve never forgotten that. And at the time, I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is going to put an end to that.” And I was so naive.

Emily Ladau:
LOL.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
And on that note, do you have a final takeaway?

Kyle Khachadurian:
The RFK is a piece of who shouldn’t be drinking raw milk, but I’m really glad he is swimming in Rock Creek. Well, he doesn’t believe in germs, so there’s no germs in there. Yeah, my final takeaway is you look great today. And I like your earrings.

Emily Ladau:
Why thank you. And you see, I would say you look great today, which you do, but I can never see your shirt. You get more of a view of me.

Kyle Khachadurian:
This is a very plain shirt.

Emily Ladau:
Straight up, plain black shirt.

Kyle Khachadurian:
It is actually navy blue, but it doesn’t look like it.

Emily Ladau:
It is navy blue.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
Okay. Well, just for our listeners at home, I am wearing a blue dress with flowers on it. And I also have these cool new earrings that I bought at a flea market in Brooklyn because wow, I am a hipster.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Emily, come on, dude. You could’ve lied about where you got the earrings. That is so good. That’s lovely. Thank you.

Emily Ladau:
Very dangfully multicolored, blue and silver triangle things. And yeah, speaking of spontaneity, here’s something spontaneous. So went to a small wedding celebration at a brewery for a friend of mine. And when we got there, we left fairly early because we needed to figure out parking in Brooklyn. Yeah.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You know what? That’s a decent analogy. During that time, that’s exactly the mental load that is what being disabled is. For the 45 minutes you’re trying to find one parking spot in Brooklyn, you get a fraction of what it’s like to exist in our bodies at all times, because you got to find a place to put your car, and you can’t.

Emily Ladau:
There you go. Yeah, perfect. Exactly. And so we tried to park in a parking garage, but the thing is that my car has hand controls on it, and it has low effort gas and brake and steering. And I don’t want somebody who doesn’t know how to drive my car to drive my car. But that then means that we can’t really park in a parking garage, especially if it’s valet only, we can only do self-park. So we left super early, we got to the parking garage. The parking garage was valet. We had to try to reason with them to let us park. They said no. So we had to turn around, leave, find another spot, which we did on the street. It was a miracle. But then my little moment of spontaneity among all of that was that we were at this event so early that there was a flea market, like an artisan craft market thing outside of the brewery. And so I was able to buy myself a pair of earrings. So you know what? I don’t know, not being able to be spontaneous leads to little moments of fun and joy.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Not being able to be spontaneous occasionally leads to some little small moments of spontaneity. Well, you can buy really cute earrings.

Emily Ladau:
Thank you. They’re fun. They change colors.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Oh my God, they do. I believed you when you said it, but I couldn’t see it before, and now I can. And yeah, they’re so cool.

Emily Ladau:
It’s a delight. Anyway, this has been another episode of The Accessible Stall.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Support us on Patreon.

Emily Ladau:
Just $1 a month ensures that every episode of The Accessible Stall is what?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Accessible. Got them. I always say I’m going to edit in the air horns. I don’t know why. I hear it. It’s not like I forget. I do forget, but then I hear it, and I’m like, “I should just do it.”

Emily Ladau:
One of these days, you will do it. But for now, you get my poor impression of an air horn.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That might be why, because we always do that, and I always laugh at it. I’m like, “That’s way better,” you’re right.

Emily Ladau:
And may we say…

Kyle Khachadurian:
RFK, because it rhymes. You look good today, that also rhymes.

Emily Ladau:
I was going to say you look good today, obviously.

Kyle Khachadurian:
You do look good today, all of you, except you, RFK.

Emily Ladau:
I actually do agree with that though. That man could have benefited from some sunscreen. Anyway, spontaneity for us is just going off on 8 million tangents when we’re trying to end the episode.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Good night everybody.

Emily Ladau:
Thanks so much for listening.

Kyle Khachadurian:
See you next time.

Emily Ladau:
Bye.