7 September—I officially became what insensitive people like me call a cripple last Tuesday when I received what insensitive people like me call a cripple sticker and Connecticut’s sensitive and politically correct Department of Motor Vehicles calls a disability parking placard and euphemizes as an accessibility parking permit. For the record, I’m so disabled that my new cripple sticker is a freebie renewable permanent one rather than a five-dollar six-month temporary baby.

Also for the record, while age itself must never be considered a disability, drivers over a certain age—let’s arbitrarily make it 75, just for convenience—should be able to get accessibility parking permits simply by virtue of longevity, without having to be certified by a medical practitioner as suffering some sort of qualifying disability or impairment.

That seems entirely reasonable and fair, doesn’t it? But before you wonder why the former misnamed American Association of Retired Persons, now simply the AARP, has never lobbied for old-fart parking stickers, consider that while it does indeed do some valuable lobbying on behalf of both retired and vocationally active old farts, it’s largely—very, very largely—a very, very profitable periodical publisher.

In fact, all of the AARP’s roughly 38 million dues-paying members, a few million of whom also serve as enthusiastic volunteers, receive the group’s magazine and then some. And the AARP, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, is exempt from paying federal income tax and most other taxes on the massive advertising revenue derived from the world’s largest-circulation periodical, as well as humongous royalties and related revenue.

Keeping up circulation figures is why the AARP incessantly nags over-50s who haven’t joined and subscribed as well as former member-subscribers and offers all sorts of junk to tempt them to join or return to the fold.

Suffice to say, the AARP could offer dues-free membership to everyone and still show a very, very attractive bottom line.

Back to my new cripple sticker, then, the first time I wanted to use it, it proved useless. Last Thursday, all the reserved-for-cripples parking spots convenient to the St. Vincent’s Medical Center entrance were occupied by other cripples. Of course, you’re thinking, it’s a bloody hospital.

So what about cripple-sticker triage? That’s for another time.

Before letting cripples untie, then, this is a photo of the St. Vincent’s radiology department’s waiting room can—i.e., handicap-accessible sanitary facility. It’s clearly wounded, having suffered some sort of traumatic injury (or old age), and is dependent on a prosthetic leg for support. But, like most of us cripples, it still works . . .