Inconspicuous

Ruth at A Different Light wrote something recently about the phenomenon of unsolicited advice. Her witty commentary here:

Yesterday a woman approached me in the grocery store while I was shopping. She said “I really think, if I was you, that I would use one of those scooters to shop. Why don’t I go with you and we’ll get you one?”

Now I can’t use a scooter because I don’t have the trunk control to sit up in one. Nor can I transfer into one in the first place. I always get a mental picture of myself draped over a grocery scooter cart and someone on the intercom saying “Pickup in aisle three - quadriplegic down.”

I haven't walked since 1983 and I've used a scooter since 1987, and I absolutely understand Ruth's explanation that a scooter is an inappropriate piece of equipment for her. I'm rare among gimps in that I don't walk at all and still use a scooter. In fact, it's generally assumed that scooter-users can walk and some disabled people are even denied financial assistance buying scooters because of this presumption, even though wheelchairs would be financially covered instead of scooters.

I use a scooter for the exact reasons Ruth does not. While my trunk muscles amd limbs are all weakened, I am not paralyzed and the platform of the scooter under my feet allows me considerable leverage in performing tasks my arms would be too weak for if I could not use my whole body. The scooter's tiller in front of me also provides an arm support and place to grip to frequently reposition myself and avoid pressure sores. I've been prescribed a power wheelchair in the past -- and had one for a while -- but it required me to sacrifice much of my remaining ability to sit back in it properly and not sit forward with some weight on my feet. My ass hurt more too.

Well, so. The equipment one uses does not necessarily indicate a specific level of ability or inability.

But that humorous bit at the end of Ruth's quote above has kept me thinking of my high school days when my best friend Jenny and I frequently went to the movies. I used an aluminum manual Quickie back then, but Jenny pushed me when we were out together. We usually managed to arrive a few minutes late so previews were playing, it was dark in the theater, and many aisle seats were taken. This was pre-ADA and there was no such thing as cut-out seating for parking a wheelchair.

I'd transfer to the first aisle seat we could find, doing my best to be speedy so we didn't get refreshments thrown at us from people whose view we blocked. Then Jenny would bring my manual to some dark corner somewhere and leave it because theater employees wouldn't allow it to remain next to me. Remember those days? ("Excuse me, but your chair is a fire hazard and must be moved far away from you so other people can leave the building if it explodes into flames.")

Movie theater aisles slope toward the screen, of course, and all this transfer business was tricky in the dark. Both Jenny and I feared that some day she would dump me onto the sticky floor or I'd fall on my own. Then what?

Shy and self-conscious times two, Jenny and I decided that if I went rolling out of my chair and down the aisle in the dark, Jenny should sit and watch the movie as if she'd arrived alone. It was the less conspicuous and embarrassing alternative to her wandering the rows calling for me lurking down there somewhere by the used gum.

See what the ADA and those inadequate-but-at-least-existing wheelchair cut-out spots have spared me from? Thanks Ruth, for reminding me of those awkward teenage years.