Rolling Around In My Head

I was following the natural flow of people as we all got off the elevator.

Joe and I always get off last when the small space is crowded so there were several people ahead of me, all going towards the lobby and outside.

The flowing line passed by a woman, with a walker, slowly walking on our right.

As we neared the lobby a woman and her friend stopped to chat, interrupting the flow and suddenly blocking me as they stood right in my way.

They saw me and indicated to the woman with the walker to get out of the way. She wasn’t in the way, I was nearly by her. THEY were in the way.

When the woman with the walker didn’t immediately respond, one of them reached forward, past me, and grabbed the sleeve of her coat pulling it, again indicating the she was in the way. She now noticed, saw me, and moved a quarter inch to the right, she was right by the wall, she had no room to manoeuvre but she tried anyway.

The two women looked at me, apologizing for the other woman’s behaviour, and then headed out. Joe was right behind me. We got out and I was fuming.

I swung my chair around and said to Joe, with the loudness that anger gives voices, “Did you see that? Did you see that?” The two women who had blocked my path stopped at their car, looking back at me, questions in their eyes. They had no idea why I was upset.”There is the assumption, always the assumption, that the disabled person is in the way. IN THE WAY|!!! That poor woman with a walker was made to feel as if she was the problem, that she was in the way. I know exactly, EXACTLY how she feels. Those two women,” who were still listening, “stepped into the flow of traffic, expected everyone to move for them, never thinking that maybe it was they who were creating the problem. No they identified a disabled woman who WASN’T IN THE WAY as the problem.

They TOUCHED| her, PULLED AT HER, made her the problem. What the hell is wrong with non-disabled people anyways.

Why do they assume all space is theirs and any we disabled people take up is somehow STOLEN FROM THEM?”

Somewhere in that rant they got in their car. But they didn’t drive away. They sat there talking animatedly with each other.

I don’t know what they said to each other. I probably don’t want to know.

But I hope it was anything that follows first realization and then the words, “OH MY GOD …”