Graeme Wilson/Collegian‘
When Matt Glowacki, a speaker who was born without legs, took the stage in the Cape Cod Lounge, any sense of awkwardness that was felt toward his birth defect was immediately eliminated.
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Glowacki, who was visiting the school Wednesday night as part of his lecture, ‘Diversity through
Knowing that it was the question on many of the guests’ minds, Glowacki addressed his handicap by telling the audience that he was simply born without legs.
‘I don’t have any legs because I was born that way,’ he said. ‘No one really knows why it happens. But, it doesn’t stop me from lying to children.’
‘Everything else is there and works just fine,’ Glowacki added, drawing the first of many laughs from the crowd.
After opening the evening by making the audience more comfortable about why he is in a wheelchair, Glowacki talked about his life and how he never let his handicap stop him from enjoying what he does.
‘I found things I like to do and turned them into jobs,’ he said.
Beginning his lecture, Glowacki spoke about how it is television, rather than parents, that teaches children. According to Glowacki, in a given week, teens will spend 35 to 55 hours watching television but only 38.5 minutes in meaningful conversation with their parents.
He followed with what many people had come for, a clip from ‘Family Guy,’ which focused on body image. Afterwards, Glowacki broke down the segment, examining the use of satire and parody to show a point. He said that, by using these methods, ‘
While Glowacki would go on to show other clips and analyze them, actual discussion of the shows was less than an audience member might have suspected.
‘The reason why I use the branding is to draw in as large an audience as I possibly can,’ Glowacki said afterwards. ‘So those people that come here that want to be entertained by the show, I feel that I deliver because I give them parts of the show I want to bring their attention to.’
Glowacki discussed a number of other topics in diversity like race. But in the end, the lecture’s strength was in Glowacki’s discussion of the type of diversity that was most familiar to him ‘- disabilities.
Glowacki defined a disability as anything that limits people from being unable to get out of cars quickly, like getting a flat tire, 13 feet of snow or a bad girlfriend.
Ableism, or what Glowacki originally called ‘gimpphobic,’ was the recurrent theme as he often referred to his past experiences.
Rather than complain about his experiences though, Glowacki focused his efforts on educating the audience as to how to talk to a disabled person and avoid offending him.
‘If you come up to me and say ‘wow, you can drive a car, how do you do it?’ That’s being ignorant. If you come up to me and say ‘I understand you can drive, but how exactly does it work?’ Then I’d love to talk to you.’
He also addressed the issue of taking the handicapped stall or parking space, saying that, even though it may not happen to you, it will always happen to the handicapped person.
‘It may be one in a hundred for you or even one in a thousand. But for me, it’s 100 percent of the time.’
Glowacki began his career as a DJ so that he could still go to dances and get paid for it. As his business grew, he also took up making customized wheelchairs. Because, as Glowacki joked, he is quite familiar and fond of wheelchairs, he has helped make wheelchairs for Olympic athletes around the world.
An Olympic athlete himself in sit-down volleyball for the Special Olympics, Glowacki often used his past experiences to help portray life through the eyes of someone who uses a wheelchair. Having no legs, however, has not affected his happiness or his sense of humor.
‘People tell me ‘no, you can’t love your life because you have a disability,” Glowacki said. ‘I tell them, ‘my disability means more to you than it does to me.’ I tell people that walking is overrated.’
Overall, Glowacki’s presentation got a positive response from the crowd, enjoying both the humorous and educational aspects of the lecture.
‘I loved it, I really did,’ senior and nursing major Charlotte Chery said afterwards. ‘It was informative but it was also entertaining. I learned a lot from it.’
‘I like all the ‘isms’ he talked about because I don’t always thing of those things,’ senior Aouatif Ansari, a marketing major, said.
Nick O’Malley can be reached at [email protected].
