Are we crazy? We live in an era where "human resources" is the universally adopted term for the personnel function.

When you stop and think about it, isn't "human resources" the worst, most Orwellian, most Logan's Runny word you've ever heard?

What was wrong with "Personnel?" At least it's got the word "person" buried in there somewhere.

This why they hide their true name behind the initials HR.

And I've complained about this one before ---

Handicapped -- perfect word. Just perfect. Golf analogy. The person starts with a few strokes of a handicap. They can still accomplish the task at hand, they just have an extra handicap against them that most of us don't have.

Wasn't good enough -- we had to say YOU ARE DISABLED. That's right-- DIS -- ABLED. As in NOT ABLE to function, you non-functional human resource.

(This made them try to recover with "differently abled" but it was too late and nobody bought it.)

I'm deaf, by the way, Jay. Fuck everyone who calls me hearing impaired.

What a needless waste of syllables.

I mean, I have a hard enough time hearing you say "deaf." Who hated me so
much that they wanted me to NOT hear three more syllables, and feel worse
about myself?

Are you really deaf?

Don't even get me started on differently abled.

Sure. Partially. I've never been able to hear out of my left ear.
I make up for it by focusing my remaining senses. I learned how to
do that when I was about five years old—by reading my Dad's old
Daredevil comics.

Seriously, though. I concentrate on people's faces, lips, gestures, and
body posturing to help me understand what they are saying. (It's one reason
why I dislike talking to people on the phone—can't see them.) I also have
spent a great deal of my life concentrating on sounds, forcing myself to hear
tiny details of the life that's going on around me.

It's no superpower. I just pay attention.

Always come up and tell John important things while he's talking on the phone... he loves that.

Are you people mentally challenged or are you retarded?

You had a Dad that read DareDevil? That's pretty cool. I had parents that threw away my comics without a second thought.

No - we're just dense.

Are we human ... or are we denser?

Yep. He owned the first 38 issues. (My first issue was 101.)
When I bought the issues in between, he was first in line to read them.
Seemed only fair.

My dad was a Daredevi...

Sorry, Beach. I forgot.

MY DAD WAS A DAREDEVIL READER, TOO, AND IT WAS THROUGH HIS COLLECTION THAT I GOT INTO THE CHARACTER. HIS COLLECTION ALSO BEGAN AT ISSUE #1.

(I have a brother who was born deaf in one ear and mostly deaf in the other. Some surgery helped bring him up to speed, but he still has very, very poor hearing in one ear.)

***post retracted***

I haven't looked into it for years, but it was my understanding that while I was
in the womb, I came down with German measles. This, apparently, stunted the
development of the nerve endings in my left ear. Apparently I have all the working
parts in the ear; it's just not "hooked up."

(This is all based upon my childhood understand, and what I learned afterwards.)

There was some talk at the time that I probably could have nerves removed from
elsewhere (my legs, for instance), and have them grafted into my ear. It was
fairly expensive to do so. Might be cheaper and better now. I've learned to live
without. It might screw me up now if I suddenly started hearing in that ear after
not having done so for 45 years.

Still. I've always considered it an option for if I lost hearing in the right ear.