Dodging poop and blame
I was wheeling on my usual 6k route, rolling on a track that runs alongside a river. It’s rather beautiful. In front of me, rapidly approaching, I see at the last second a dog poop steaming directly in my path. I grab one wheel and turn abruptly to avoid it. It’s a move that will surely inconvenience people, it’s thoughtless, and could even be considered reckless. But I do not want poop on my wheels, my hands go there!
A woman is pushing a pushchair coming towards me when I turn. I suddenly jerk directly into her path. I know I’m clearly in the wrong here. I instantly raise my hands in apology. It turns out that putting your hands in the air while in control of a wheelchair is also pretty unwise and I have to suddenly grab the rims again to prevent myself ending up in her pram. Taking candy from a baby is one thing but replacing them in a pushchair is generally considered uncouth.
The pram pusher is brought to a stop suddenly, she looks at me.
She apologises.
I’m so clearly in the wrong that it’s almost comical. I flew into her path, putting her infant at risk, not to save a life, not to avoid injury, but to dodge poop. I'm at best minimising my own inconvenience. I’m a little speechless, and I go to apologise again, but I can’t seem to take responsibility for what was clearly my mistake. The pushchair pusher smiles broadly at me, is effusive, placatory. She’s so quick and firm in her conviction that somehow she was in the wrong that I literally can’t do anything but forgive her.
This is actually a strangely common experience. When I was in Vienna I was wheeling through a museum at a drinks reception and I wheeled too fast and too close to people standing nearby. I had forgotten that the wheelchair I was using at the time, Firefly, was only barely smaller than a Ford Bronco and I was moving like she was a Kawasaki Ninja. There was a diminutive gap between the back of a woman’s legs and the wall behind her and I figured I could thread the needle. As I approached far too quickly I realised far too late that I could not, in fact, thread the needle.
I caught the woman’s heel with my chair.
When I hurt her she winced, pulled away, turned abruptly. I was in the wrong, clearly. So clearly that security could reasonably have asked me to leave. So clearly that the international court of justice should probably have issued a formal censure. I couldn’t have been more in the wrong if I’d caught the back of her leg with her car I’d just stolen. She looked around with consternation slipping precariously into anger. I held up my hands.
She sees me. She sees the chair. Her expression changes instantly from thinly veiled fury to profound understanding, even deference.
Instantly, she apologises.
The wheelchair, somehow, makes me entirely immune from blame. I don’t really understand why. Maybe it’s the lack of realistically complex disabled representation. The simple sadness or inspiration that we’re always portrayed to invoke means that when people see me they imagine that I’m in need, struggling, in pain, or overcoming the odds, defiant, inspiring. But neither ‘suffering victim’ nor ‘rogueish inspiration’ makes room for the possibility that the person in the wheelchair is just a bit of an ass sometimes. As a verifiable inspiration people assume I must be fundamentally just the very best kind of person.
Maybe it’s more the fear people have with perceiving disabled people negatively. If people see my behaviour as the actions of an ass, they have to reckon with the idea that they might be the kind of person who sees a disabled person as a bit of an ass sometimes. Good people don’t see people in wheelchairs as bad people, that’s something bad people do. The cognitive dissonance is resolved by taking responsibility because if this wheelchair user isn’t in the wrong, they can’t be a bad person.
Maybe it’s the fear of being perceived negatively in how folk treat disabled people publicly. Maybe they secretly do recognise my asshattery but can’t be seen to be angry with a wheelchair user. Being angry with wheelchair users is what bad people who go instantly viral on TikTok do. So they become infinitely patient, limitlessly understanding, and if they do go viral, it’ll be to inspiring music and the applause of viewers.
Whatever it is, what I’ve come to realise is that when I’m walking I need to take care; I can be considered an asshole if I am one. I’m actually sometimes considered an asshole even if I’m not being one, simply because when I’m walking my disability is much less visible. When your disability is visible you spend a lot of energy convincing people of your abilities, when your disability is invisible you spend a lot of energy convincing people of your disability.
I went to a show in London and my wheelchair was helpfully stowed until the end of the show. In the intermission I walked to the bar. Maybe it was too hot. Maybe I was too tired. Maybe I was just unlucky. My legs were in a surprisingly bad state, and could barely hold me upright. I stumbled a little to the bar and leant upon it waiting to be served a cup of water, hoping that cooling down would give me a little more strength. There was a queue for drinks that I had cut to lean on the bar, but if I had stood in the queue I’d be literally shuffling on my bum on the floor until I got served. A woman shoved past me to get to the bar, clearly angry that I was cutting in line. I tried to explain to her that the wheelchair in the corner of the room was mine, that I wasn’t intending to cut the line, that I only wanted water, and that I needed something to lean on... But she was having none of it. Her mind was made up that I was some entitled young thing, likely an instagram model, who was happily putting herself ahead of other people, the gorgeous scumbag.
But when I’m in the chair I literally cannot be in the wrong. I’m suddenly completely immune to judgement. I literally think that if I crashed a car into the front of a jewellery store and started filling my purse with necklaces I’d be in some trouble, but if I first pulled out my wheelchair people would apologise for putting the shop in an inconvenient spot and ask if I needed help reaching the top shelf.
Either way, walking or wheeling, I’m not a whole person. When walking I’m wholly capable, completely independent, and there are no limits to my physical abilities. When I’m in the chair I’ve never stood in my entire life, my legs are essentially sticks of celery, and there isn’t much point in speaking with me because I probably can’t understand you anyway and, if I can, the main reason to speak to me is to offer help because I’m clearly in need of the most charity anyone in the room can afford. Quick, someone give this poor thing a coat, can’t you see she’s on death’s door here?! She coughed! Somebody call an ambulance!!
Ugh.
It’s all pretty exhausting, I’m not going to lie. Next week I’m thinking of going to a bar on my own. I’m in Manchester for a night and it’d be fun to meet some people. But the bar is at the limit of my walking distance and if I walk I’ll be stumbling by the time I reach it. So the choice is between using the Rocinante and people only speaking to me to ask if I’m lost, and leaving the Roci at the hotel and the bartender cutting me off for being too drunk before I’ve ordered my first martini.