Designing Disasters

By Rawnie Runn

"Funny You Should Ask: Living with a Disability" may seem to be an odd treatment of what is normally considered an un-funny subject. In the current deluge of laugh-a-minute TV sitcoms, we can lose sight of what humour is all about. Humour is not a didactic tool or a propaganda weapon. Neither, though, is it something that closes your mind and rolls a joke across it.

"Real humour is like a Pandora’s box -- it opens the mind and lets all the diaphanous beasties out into the sunlight where they can dissolve," says Rawnie Dunn.

-- Suzanne Norman


Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. When it’s in a talented and caring person, it’s unstoppable. My mother is a case in point. She’s been a fashion designer for years and she’s come up with many beautiful, original designs.

She also cares about the problems people with disabilities can face getting into and out of clothing and has set herself the task of helping to solve some of those problems.

All of this is certainly praiseworthy and I don’t wish to complain, but it’s just that she always wants a disabled person to test her creations. And it’s always me. For example, when she designed a pair of pants with a system of hooks and pulleys so the wearer wouldn’t have to bend over to pull them up, I’m the one who had to go out in them. The system worked fine, but I looked like a building under construction.

Another time she created a top with a neckline so loose that it would flop over the head and settle into a position without any tugging or straining. The trouble was that after it flopped over my head, it kept on going until it settled into a position around my knees.

She has also created many designs of clothing that will come off easily. Very easily. Like if you breathe. Often, I have gone out with more snaps in my clothing than there are in an exotic dancer’s.

A week before my last birthday, she presented me with a pair of jeans she’d made with the problems some people with disabilities have in public rest rooms in mind. Everything was designed for speed in undressing. The underwear was fastened with Velcro to the inside of the jeans, and a 24-inch zipper ran across the back and down one leg. The idea was: one quick unzip and, presto, the entire back falls away like the flap on a baby’s sleepers!

I wore them when I went to a special lecture on my birthday. Just before the lecture was to start, I nipped into the washroom to test my jeans again. They worked perfectly and I was very happy with them, until it came time to zip them back up again and the zipper stuck. Someone must have wondered why I stayed in the washroom for the entire lecture. I’d probably be there still if a good friend hadn’t happened by. I will be eternally grateful to her (but I do wish she hadn’t laughed quite so loudly).

As commendable as her intentions are, I wasn’t too sad when, after learning about the birthday incident, my mother swore to stop designing special clothing. That was only a few months ago, but yesterday she called to tell me about her newest invention for people with disabilities.

"I’ve got this marvellous idea," she said excitedly, "for crutches. You know how you always say that you move too jerkily to use crutches? Well, these ones don’t have to be lifted off the ground and repositioned every time you take a step. You see, they have little wheels on the bottom. I want you to test them for me."

I can hardly wait.


(Reprinted from "Funny You Should Ask: Living with a Disability" by Rawnie Dunn. To order, send a cheque or money order for $10 to: Council of Canadians with Disabilities, #926 - 294 Portage Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R3C 0B9. To reach Rawnie, send e-mail to: rdunn@lynx.bc.ca.)