Movies, Conundrums and Worry

Star Wars – The Force Awakens is playing in theatres that I no longer have easy access to, what with my power chair being in for repair.

The theatre closest to me isn’t playing it, the only other on I can get to has very small screens.

I figure that anything Star Wars needs a big screen.

Joe and I have been waiting to go until my chair is fixed, but, as it happens, we’re all going to go tomorrow. A huge whack of us, kids, adults, fans and droids.

Organizing this was hard for me because I had to ask a huge favour. As I can’t go in my power chair and my scooter won’t make any other theatre in the downtown core, I need to go by car and take my manual chair.

The theatre that’s easiest for me, the parking is directly below, accessible parking is by the elevator, short ride up, then a short roll on the side walk and into the theatre.

This is where we used to go when we lived out of the city. Now this is best for me, but furthest for everyone else.

I said to Joe that I thought that it wasn’t fair for me to ask everyone to go further than they would normally have to, to a theatre a bit out of the way transit wise. I said that I thought maybe we should just turn down the opportunity to go with everyone and wait until we get my chair and he and I could go together.

Joe was good with that.

But he asked me a question.

Is it fair to everyone going to decide what inconveniences them and what doesn’t? Maybe they don’t think that theatre is out of the way.

People can just say ‘no’ if they don’t want to go there. Why assume that this is even a problem for anyone?

I thought about that. From my discussions with others with disabilities, I get a sense that at least some of us have both a fear of asking friends for adaptations because how many can you ask for before the friendship becomes burdensome, and a fatigue of constantly having to ask for help of any kind from anyone.

Those two things can lead, for me some times, to an unhealthy way of thinking of myself and my disability.

So, I pulled it all together and said that I’d like to go but with my chair being down, I’d need to go to a particular theatre.

Every single person said, “Yeah, sure, no problem.”

But, and this is important, that’s what their words said, but their tone also said, “Yeah, sure, no problem.”

I’d worked this up into an issue in my head.

And it wasn’t.

The thing is, I can’t learn from this. I can’t simply say, well I worry about this too much or the worries are real or these requests aren’t ever a problem.

Because next time.

It might be.