For some reason, being in a wheelchair has made me feel rather feisty.
I don’t know what it is about being confined to a rolling chair that takes away my inhibition and turns me into the crotchety old woman next door who speaks her mind much too easily. Not that I have a neighbor like that…oh wait, yes, yes I do. She spies on us through her bathroom window, and hates it when my brother’s car alarm goes off 🙂
Anyway, back to meeee.
After using the crutches for a day to get around campus, I realized the morning after that this was a terrible, terrible idea. I was almost in tears from my sore body as I hobbled down the hallway, only to turn on the hot water and lay in the bathtub while my muscles absorbed the soothing heat. I had been offered a wheelchair, but refused to take it, in some weird attempt to prove to everyone that I was tough enough to hack it for 6 weeks on crutches while maintaining my regular lifestyle. I was severely humbled by day two, and accepted the offer when it was made again.
I feel almost as if I am in the middle of a big social experiment, getting a tiny taste of what peeple with this as a permanent situation deal with on a day to day basis. I know I will eventually be upright again, but in the meantime, I might as well have fun with it, right?
So far, I’m still very clumsy with the steering, so there has been a lot of crashing. The only thing is – I find this exceptionally hilarious. I was always clumsy on two feet, why should I be any better on wheels? But I’ve noticed that as I’m crashing into walls, getting closed in doors, and losing my grip on the brake, other people are hesitant to laugh quite as hard at me as I am. Is it rather socially unacceptable to laugh at the girl in the wheelchair? Absolutely. What if she’s laughing at herself? I say it’s fair game.
I found that I am also prone to violent spurts of indignation when certain public places aren’t up to snuff with their wheelchair accessibility. Come on people…make the aisles a little wider if you don’t want me to holler for help when I get stuck in between racks every two seconds. What if there was a fire, or some other kind of highly unlikely and improbable “what if” scenario natural disaster? Would I have to rely on all the business casual employees? The ones that ask me if I’m finding everything okay, but if I’d said, “No, a way out of your bad floor plan would be fantastic” would probably only nod and smile and ask me if I wanted to save 20% by opening a credit account today?
And what’s up with curbs? Why, oh why aren’t the sloping ramps everywhere? If there is an entrance to a store, make a ramp. Easy, right? When you go looking for them, sometimes they’re harder than you think to find, or they require a major detour to get to.
And these kids…geez. I’m telling you, if a kid gets on my nerves and in my way, you can bet that I will charge him like a chariot and make him cry for his mother (rest assured, that kid had it coming, I promise..).
Also…elevators. Good invention. But people? Sometimes they could use a little work. I can take up most of an elevator all by myself now, and the people waiting with me for the next available one knew it. They also knew they were faster than me, and could fill the tiny moving room with themselves before I could so much as angle my chair right so that I could start the process of getting in. It didn’t matter that I had been there first. Two rounds of people watched this happen and actively participated without ever meeting my eyes before one nice woman finally put her hands out and said, “Wait..go ahead. You were here first.”
Seriously though, this whole experience is pretty interesting.
My friends and family have been great as I’m getting used to it. My first day in, my brother, my mom, and my friend showed up on their longboards at my office, wanting to take me out for a spin. Pushing me around the campus, my mom found out just how fast these wheels can go, and I laughed in the boys faces when the security guard made them walk as I rolled past them. And as I thanked my coworker later in the day as she rolled me to our division meeting, she replied, “No problem. I push my friend’s baby around in her stroller all the time, I’m used to it.”
I have a newfound respect for people who do this for extended periods of time. I’m actually finding it quite hard to rely on others so much for such normal everyday things as opening a bathroom door for me, or handing me the crutches that fell to the floor. I feel more vulnerable than I have in a long time, being stuck in a chair with a heavy duty leg brace that would take me up to 5 minutes to get off even if I wanted to. You’re merely trusting in the people around you not to steer you wrong 100% of the time. And crossing streets is pretty scary – knowing that if a car sped down the street, I couldn’t run away..kind of sucks. When I push myself, I have a tendency to spin in circles to the left, and when I try to stop myself, my bandaged fingers get caught in the spokes. I swear at least one of them will be broken before this whole thing is over.
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