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was wearing a cap he particularly liked, it was a comedy cap. It had a stuffed arm holding a hammer emerging out of it which appeared to be beating the wearer on his own head. The man wiped the pizza from his shoe with Geoffrey's hat.
    Geoffrey may have been having more trouble than usual making himself understood that day but this last gesture confirmed an understanding that had been dawning on him for some time: that he was in the presence of a couple of potentially very dangerous people.
    Pizza-shoe roughly crammed the hat back on Geoffrey's head.
    'Where's the doc, zit face?' he demanded.
    Geoffrey gulped.
    'He can't tell you nothing, can he,' said the other, speaking for the first time.
    'Look at the state he's in. Let's search the building.'
    And with that Geoffrey's interrogators stalked from the room, leaving Geoffrey rather shaken by his unpleasant encounter. Not as shaken as he would have been if he had realized that, had he not been a spastic, he would have been murdered. But none the less, pretty shaken.
    Being a spastic had not done Geoffrey a lot of favours in his life. In fact it could be said to have been a total and utter drag from start to finish. However, in that brief moment, being a spastic had actually made up for quite a number of its shortcomings as a physical condition. It had unquestionably saved Geoffrey's life, because if Geoffrey had not been a spastic, or CP sufferer as some people call it, the two thugs would certainly have killed him.
    This is not to say that they refrained from such a course of action out of any sense of sympathy; they did not say to themselves, 'Oh look, hell, the poor bugger's been knocking glasses off tables all his life and probably never been able to masturbate properly. Let's give him a break, eh?' No, the two thugs in question were far too hard of heart for that. It was simply that it never occurred to them that the strange, guttural sounding, twitchy chap sat before them could be the brilliant scientist and inventor whom they had been ordered to murder. But he was.
    People with disabilities are very used to being looked through, over, and around. Judged by their covers so to speak. They no longer find it surprising when it is presumed that they have little or no potential and nothing to add to a conversation (other than a conversation on the subject of disability). This is not to say that it gets any easier to put up with, spending one's entire life being underestimated never ceases to be anything other than a horrendous strain, but people with disabilities certainly recognize the attitude. Geoffrey did, he was always being either ignored or patronized and on this occasion he was extremely fortunate that it was the case.

Chapter Two
WHAT IS IN A NAME?
    There is a debate surrounding the word 'spastic'. This concerns its appropriation, by those who do not suffer from cerebral palsy, as a term of contempt. There can scarcely be any able-bodied person who has not used, or at least failed to confront the use of, the word 'spastic' as an insult.
    It is normally a youthful insult, particularly beloved of small farty boys ('Cripes, spew face, you're such a spastic'), but it resonates throughout the population. We all know that to call someone a 'spastic' means that they are stupid, worthless and beneath contempt. Hence the debate for those who actually are spastics about what to do with such a tainted term. It's their word, it describes a condition from which they suffer, but it has been stolen, and the question is, do they want it back? Being as how the word spastic has come to imply an all-encompassing and extremely negative summation of a person's abilities and personality, is the word any longer of any real relevance to those who suffer from cerebral palsy? Has the very word itself not become yet another cross that people with this condition are fated to bear?
    Some say yes. Some say that the word has been debased beyond redemption. Some say that it must be discarded as a