Dear Wheelchair: We Need to Talk

Dear Wheelchair:

We need to talk. Yes, I know: no conversation in history starting off that way ever ended well. But there are some things we need to hash out.

We’ve been together nearly half a decade. Wow, that’s significant. Five years is the length of cohabitation most health insurance policies require before a chair user can get a new chair. Not that I’m in the market for another, dear. I’m just sayin’…

Now, babe, don’t cry. Need some reassurance? You are amazing at giving me my own space. I mean, you are the opposite of clingy. Of course, I would expect nothing less from someone named Torque Storm. Not exactly the moniker of a clinging vine.

But sometimes you’re just a little too laissez–faire. I’ve got an image to uphold, you know. People see a gimp girl in a wheelchair and they immediately assume I’m “wheelchair bound.” (Stop snickering. The B&D of our private life is nobody’s business.) They’re convinced that we’re perpetually fused together. That I shower in you, sleep in you. That I never transfer out of you into a theater seat. Can you imagine what they’d say if they saw me taking a few steps with my walker? Good God, the fallout that would cause.

This affects your image, too, you know. You and your progenitors have established your reputation as symbols of failure, as prisons on wheels. What would they say if it leaked out that you’re really enablers, huh? Enablers of mobility, of freedom…of independence, even! What if I went to the press and told them the truth: that I never would have gotten an education, made a career or left the dang house without you in my life? Two can play at that game, my friend.

Come on now, baby. I didn’t mean to be cruel. You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. So what if you’re not my first, or even my fifth? So what if my chair throughout college cradled my backside like no other? It didn’t mean anything. It was nothing compared to what we have. We’re going to be together forever, just you wait and see.

Or at least until insurance says I can roll you to the curb.

Disabilities, Bad Attitudes and Mental Flights of Fancy

I try to live my life by a few simple maxims:

“Strive for balance in all things.”

“Never eat more than you can lift.”

“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”

It took me years to see the wisdom in that last one. I mean, severe pain and joint damage of rheumatoid arthritis – my particular challenge – are pretty darn dramatic. Having shoulders, hips and knees severed from me and new ones bolted in have proven to be a bit of a distraction.

But I think I’ve finally seen the light and rehabilitated my attitude.

Now when I go to a new restaurant and all of the tables are high with bar stools, I focus on my attitude. Even though I spend the meal staring into my companions’ knees, I mentally try to levitate. That doesn’t actually allow me to socialize with my friends or even hear much of the conversation, but it cleans out all of the “badness” in my mind.

My rehabilitation also comes in handy when I’m traveling and need to catch a taxi. Whether I attempt a street hail or try to schedule a ride by phone, getting a wheelchair-accessible taxi is next to impossible. But that’s OK. Although my trip then requires numerous buses and is four times longer than a cab ride, I’m zipping along through traffic – only in my mind, of course.

If I stay in a hotel or at a relative’s home and there’s no wheelchair-accessible roll-in shower, no problem. As I take my sponge bath at the sink, I imagine myself under a luxurious rain-style shower head. Ah, the lovely flowing water…

You see, I’ve come to realize that being marginalized from society happens not because humankind continues to build restaurants, malls, theaters, offices, transportation and housing with physical barriers. Oh, no. The problem lies within the mind of each and every person with a disability. Fix the attitude and you’ve fixed the problem.

Excuse me -- must run. I need to adjust my attitude up a flight of stairs now. 

Disability: A Fate Worse Than Death?

Step right up, kids. I’ve got something I gotta tell you, and that something it this: drive stupid and you’ll face the worst possible fate you could ever imagine.

What do I mean by “drive stupid?” I mean taking your eyes off the road, especially for stupid reasons. Like to replay that Demi Lovato tune. Or to re-adjust those flesh tunnels in your blown-out earlobes. Or to send a text from your Hushed app to that unwitting recipient who thinks you’re a chick from Barcelona when you’re really a dude from Barstow.

You see, distracted driving can have some mighty brutal results. Like wrapping your dad’s Kia Sorrento around a tree. Think how mad he’s gonna be when it’s totaled ‘cause your leg is now attached to the carburetor. 

 

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve seen the “scare ‘em” movies in Driver’s Ed of real-life crashes. You think I’m trying to frighten you with the specter of death.  Au contraire, amigo mio. I am trying to make you piss your pants at the thought of something much worse than death: being disabled.

Being disabled is way worse than death. At least a corpse is still a full-fledged person. But a wheelchair user? Truth be told, going from “cool to crippled” would drop your value to about six-tenths of a human being. That’s why we’ve placed a non-disabled kid in a vintage wheelchair, told him to hang his head in shame, and put his photo on the above poster.

Being disabled is absolutely the worst thing we could think of. The worst combination of fear and shame imaginable.

Worse than running over a toddler. Worse than doing time for vehicular manslaughter. Worse than being dogged by a felony record. Hell, worse than death itself.

So the next time you text while driving because you figure ending up in a coffin doesn’t sound so bad, remember: you could end up in a wheelchair instead.

ON INTERNET MEMES AND OTHER UNQUESTIONED ACTS OF BIGOTRY

Perhaps by now you’ve seen the Internet meme making the rounds of a drawing of a guy in a wheelchair. He’s looking back over his shoulder, a sad, pathetic expression on his face. Surrounding him are the following words: “If you're (sic) spouse became disabled for the rest of there (sic) lives, would you still be with them???”

Yes, dear reader, it is taking all of the strength I can muster to resist calling the meme’s creator a moron incapable of knowing the difference between "you're" and "your" and “their” and “there,” or even knowing how to use a software grammar check function. And, yes, I am irritated with the use of the pronoun “them,” as if the question poses the hypothetical situation that this is a pluralist marriage that includes multiple partners who “became disabled” all at once. Perhaps it’s implying the crash of a plane on which the multiple marital partners were flying, or they all contracted a rare tropical disease while on safari together.

I also believe it is quite likely that anyone who uses three question marks in a row probably dots every letter “i” with a tiny heart. For that reason alone, the meme’s creator should be placed a stockade in the village square and bombarded with rotten produce.

 

Nevertheless, it’s not the meme’s grammatical atrocities that have inspired me to write this post. It is the sheer butt-puckering bigotry of the question being posed. Why is it an acceptable question worthy of an answer?

Would it be appropriate to ask: “If your spouse sent in DNA to 23 and Me and learned he/she had African ancestry, would you divorce him/her?” Or “If your spouse told you his/her grandparents emigrated from Uruguay, would you make him/her relocate permanently to the guest bedroom?” Or perhaps “If your spouse converted to Judaism, would you toss him/her off a cliff?”

I’d like to think that most decent human beings would be appalled by questions about whether a spouse remains worthy of love even if he/she is of a different race, religion or country of national origin. Yet when it comes to disability, many people – such as those that actually answered the question on Facebook – feel it’s fine to weigh the option of giving walking papers to the person they married.

I’m not sure whether to be pissed off or profoundly sad that a quarter century after the passage of the ADA – the most comprehensive civil rights statute ever enacted to protect disabled folks from discrimination – societal attitudes remain in the Dark Ages. We continue to deny that illnesses and health issues are inextricably part of the human condition. We still cling to hierarchies, to notions of “us versus them,” to assigning value to other human beings based on their ability to meet an often unattainable ideal.

Perhaps I should buy a more comfortable mattress for the guest bedroom.