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Whenever I talk about it, some people think I have nothing to do except lay around all year watching TV, playing video games* or whatever!  Well, the truth is that I don't watch TV because I am too busy being a very active community volunteer for the general public - and mentor for University students who have created their own organic food co-operative, selling in a shop, the fruit and vegetables they grow in their market garden!

I don't have time for a job, which I haven't had since early 1987, because I also write to authorities and food manufacturers about the toxic products that they sell to unsuspecting or devious shopkeepers who knowingly or unknowingly pass off their contaminated products to their customers as being safe!  Part of my 'disabilities' are due to food allergies, intolerances and recoveries from the same symptoms as food poisoning!  Yes, many foods are not only dangerous to consume in the long term, many of those have ingredients, which aren't even organic!

A lot of additives are just not food at all, they're often chemical in nature - like Go to Wikipediacoal tar in some licorice and chocolates!  I saw a Facebook post once - about Christmas cake decorations that were coated in aluminium so they shone like chromed tow-bar balls!  Anyway, preservatives and many foods still affect me - some very seriously!

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Having a disability doesn't mean I can't do things that other people can. In fact, I can do just about anything - like go to the Antarctic - if I had an astronaut's suit to protect me from potentially-lethal temperatures! The Sun's reflection from seawater is also a problem, whch is where the gold-lined helmet would come in handy!  Cold winds are automatically shut out by wearing such a suit. I was born with an aversion to cold winds, but many people still don't understand why I wear a heavy jacket with a lined hood in moderate temperatures!  If the wind blows, so does my nose!

Age hasn't helped, so the older I get, the more vulnerable I become, and people forget - or don't know that I am a man who is kicking around with people young enough to be my children and grandchildren!  I am living my life all over again, and am now in my young adult years!  Not bad for someone near retiring age, ay?  While people are spending millions of dollars looking for the fountain of youth, either in a pool or bottle of liquid - here am I, having found it many years ago!  My philosophy for youth is "Think young, act young, feel young, be young."

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I spend a great deal of time tending to one or more minor medical problems every day!  It takes me about three times as long to do somethng that other people can do it in!  Many jobs just don't get done, especially in the Summer when I get hay fever - another life-long affliction!  I was born wth hidden disabilities, especially to basic foods - and hydrocarbons, like car fuels and cleaning fluids!  Having most of my disabilities hidden is why peole don't understand. When I am reasonably healthy, it seems like there is absolutely nothing wrong with me!  Anyway, I am not disabled, only restricted in what I can do, using the same methods that other people expect, but I am not them!  I am me who can do anything I want, at anytime and in any place!  Apparently, that is true because the lawn needed mowing so badly once that I cut it with full-blown hay fever - you know, watery eyes, sneezing nose and tiredness, but at that time, not the exhaustion I can get!

People must not judge others based on what they are themselves!  No two people are exactly alike, and until they meet and discuss the abilities of each other, no one should be become aggressive, abusive and outright bullying!  Don't become too concerned with these - I have learned to live with them because being disabled has been a part of life since I was born!  It's a way of life for me!  I have only been on a Disability Pension since January 1994 because every doctor, nurse, naturopath and employment officer gave up trying to fix me!  Nobody knows what to do with me anymore, so they have just cast me aside in the hope that I won't bother them!

Well, that has given me lots of time to continue to be a community volunteer (continually since December, 1978) - and now mentor!  With no job that I can do for very long, I can now get on with life, working one day and resting the next. When I am refreshed, out I go again, but if I work too hard, especially for two or more days in a row, I need to sleep in the afternoons - anywhere I can!  I am no longer young, and don't do what younger people can - except at my own pace!  If it costs too much or takes far too long to accomplish, it won't matter anymore, and is left behind in my quest to stay active. I don't need - or eat much!  I am only me!

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*Okay, so I have played video games until recently, but only strategic ones that make me think hard so I don't end up in an old people's home being financed by taxes, or worse - my siblings' finances!  I can't stand those war games where characters run around shooting at and killing almost everyone is sight - and I no longer play video games all day and night like many teenagers and young adults do!  I get tired just playing them for hours on end because I am basically a physically active person!

I have to love life, live a lot and share everything I have learned and acquired because I know how to have real fun, which young people who are hooked on technology, don't!

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Keep in mind that one of the reasons why I am on a permanent Disability Pension is because I was poisoned by a zinc works in 1980!  Before then, I was only chronically affected from November to February by hay fever every year since I was about 3 years old. During my 5 months in hell - in one of the dirtiest work places on Earth, I was forced to eat the dust from the road every time a truck went past me!

Just before I walked out the gate about an hour before knockoff time, I was inside an enclosed conveyor belt housing, which was full of floating rock dust that sparkled in the light. All I had on my face was one of those cheap and useless, white building masks, which allowed dust to be drawn inwards around the bridge of my nose, every time I inhaled! When jarosite was being poured from a high crane onto the massive, conical dust pile on the wharf, I couldn't see most of the Eastern Shore across the river, about 600 metres or 1/3 of a mile away!

This is what I was eating every day I was there - Go to Wikipediajarosite!  I also inhaled the vapours of ammonia, hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid and unknown chemicals, including a brown cloud large enough to fill a house!  Others I have heard about include lead, copper and cadmium! No one should have to die from those, but most of my former neighbours did because they worked at the same zinc works as me!   I had no intention of following them into their graves, so 24 hours a day and 7 days a week of hay fever was the last straw!  Since then, my respiratory system has been variously sensitive to vinegar vapour, most dusts and smokes, acrylic paint, glues and even laboratory chemicals!

Now you know why I can't stay in draughts and strong winds of less than about 25 degrees Centigrade!  My respiratory system seems to have been changed forever, but life is not all bad these days!  At least I can tolerate many dusts and vapours, but not smoke - especially tobacco!

(Created July 31, 2014 - Updated 21 April, 2017)