I Was Born (In a Hospital Bed) - when I was 31 years old

'I Was Born (In a Hospital Bed) - when I was 31 years old', is on one level an analysis of a personal experience and reaction to growing up with a disability. It is also a look at a process of integrating one person's awakening to the positive role a disability might play in someone's life with a common history of other individuals with disabilities and with the evolution of the disability rights movement in the US from the 1970s to the twenty-first century. The article is based on a speech delivered to a five-state disability rights conference in the early 1990s.