Gimp Etiquette

In comments to my BADD post below, Attila the Mom links to Sunny Dreamer's list of Wheelchair Etiquette and Mr. Soul says:

Wheelchair/gimp etiquette is different in different places. New Yorkers will promptly pick you up if you fall on your face, and then walk on without even saying "hello"--which to me is weird! OTOH, southerners say hello--or "hey!"--to EVERYBODY, therefore if they don't say hello to you, it is evidence of disability-phobia and avoidance.

I am curious about gimp-etiquette elsewhere.

Speaking not just about wheelchairs but more generally, here's a roundup of what I recall some folks have said:

Bint at My Private Casbah has written about this:

During the periods of time that I've lived outside of the south, I came to see that people in those areas are just a lot less friendly--at least in the way that southerners would probably describe friendliness. It's not that they are necessarily rude but they just don't seem to seek out social interactions as much as we do down here. For instance, if someone saw me eating alone at the local coffeeshop one morning and they started asking me questions about my disability, I wouldn't consider it rude at all. It's just something we do down here. We will hold a conversation about almost anything with a stranger. On the other hand, striking up a conversation with the barista or customer at a northern coffeeshop, just isn't going get the same reaction.

I think it would be a bit interesting to find out if being questioned (about your disabilities) by strangers bothers other southern PWD as much as it does those who are from the north. I wonder if others feel like I do when it comes to these sort of questions from others who have disabilities. When I encounter other disabled people and they ask me questions, it feels less like talking to a stranger. Even if they ask me questions that go beyond what I'd probably be comfortable telling a stranger, it doesn't really seem rude to me because I don't have to feel any pressure to give them the super-cheerful answers that I sometimes feel obligated to give non-disabled people. Does that make sense? I dunno.

And so has Sara at Moving Right Along. Here on the reticence of New Englanders and trying to bridge that gap:

So sometimes I would have a female customer with no hair, far, far less common than a male customer with no hair, and maybe she had that grey transparency to her skin people in chemo have, and maybe she didn't. Maybe she wore a kerchief, because she was okay with the baldness, or a wig, because she felt she had to hide it. And I would never know the truth of this person's life unless she chose to volunteer it. But I had all this -- yes -- love, and this newly sprung hole in the wall of reticence through which it all just wanted to leak over everyone. Yet there was nothing I could do except smile.

Sometimes I would think I knew the truth, and I would smile extra big. And sometimes I would ask people how they were in a voice that I tried to make thick with extra meaning, like some kind of metaphorical secret handshake. And sometimes they would beam back at me or smile sadly back at me in ways that hinted "handshake received and returned." And sometimes they wouldn't.

And Steve at Planet of the Blind has said quite a bit about helpful strangers generally. I forget if he has expounded on regional differences, or global, since I know he's traveled, though he hints at it a bit here:

And all you wanted was coffee. Maybe a cholesterol busting eggs and bacon dish. Yes and you wanted silence. You wanted a moment's worth of freedom from American sincerity. You had wanted to sit, unclouded, contemplating your earthly duties with nothing more than a bite of scrambled eggs and a swig of coffee.

O the vastness of disability. O the lonely geography of America and all its respective, shattered childhoods...

I have to think about this a little before I generalize between my experiences in Minnesota, Illinois and Arizona, the places I've lived. But I will say that there are distinct differences between a rural Midwestern town and a urban university environment in the American Southwest.

Anyone else?