The Fight for Social Security Disability

As I told my primary care physician, one must be incredibly robust and in magnificent health in order to find the stamina required to prove that one is not.
It seems that the requirement for being turned down the first time for Social Security disability is to fill out reams of forms in which, among other things, one prints the name of one’s disease several dozen times. When one’s illness is as long a term as mine (chronic asthmatic bronchitis) that uses up a weakened person’s strength for the entire day right there.

For the privilege of being turned down the second time, the requirement is to fill out several times as many forms as one did the first time, now laboriously printing out the disease’s name probably at least a hundred times (and yes, the forms are filled out by hand).

It is fortunate that I engaged a local law firm specializing in Social Security disability cases before I received the instructions for a third application. Upon receipt, I immediately called my representative at said law office, and here is what I said to her:

“Now let me see if I have this straight. While I am far too ill to get out of bed and get dressed, and while I am in no condition to drive, I am supposed to do exactly that. I am supposed to drive on the interstate, which I don’t do when I’m well, because I don’t have a death-wish. Then, I am supposed to drive into the inner city, which I also don’t do when I’m well, because I still don’t have a death-wish. Next, I’m supposed to find the holy grail, i.e. an unoccupied parking space in an inner city. Following that, somehow without getting mugged, murdered, raped, or robbed, I am supposed to walk along the inner-city streets until I find a courthouse to which I’ve never been, and which I haven’t the slightest idea where to find. Last of all, I’m supposed to enter that courthouse and prove to a judge why I can’t do everything that I just did. Have I summed it all up accurately?”

She murmured self-consciously that I had, and marveled, “Gee, I never thought of any of that in that way.”

I refrained from bellowing the rude expression, “Duh??!!” and simply concluded, “Then will you please inform those witless wonders that if I could do all of that, I wouldn’t need their damned disability, and that I would go back at once to my job, which isn’t even one-tenth as demanding?”

The result? I won Social Security disability right then and there…on the grounds that I have now been deemed insane.

This is the best illustration that I can provide revealing just how uncommon “common sense” is. I am crazy because I possess common sense, and because I can see the obvious. Go figure.

The following picture illustrates how "Civil Servants" approach their jobs.

Any questions?