2008-07-07 - 10:06 p.m.
This hit me far more viscerally than I would have expected. But the cab home from the screening of The Wackness that I never actually got to started to drop me off at the wrong building. It was really just a small mistake and the place was only a few blocks from my house. In fact, given it was such a sunny day, I could have easily gotten out there and gone the short way back to my building. But instead I totally freaked out.
See, there’s a building right near me that houses only people in wheelchairs. It’s not quite a nursing home, but it’s definitely “segregated housing”. Crip-land. That’s where the taxi initially tried to drop me off. As the cabbie apologetically explained, he’s just so used to dropping off people in wheelchairs there that he just naturally assumed…
Yeah, assumed. I’m getting all too used to people’s assumptions about me as soon as they see I use a wheelchair. That I’m impoverished, stupid, totally helpless. That I need something burdensome from you personally and/or society generally. That I’m out of the running in life generally and so certainly romantically (it’s not possible I could have a wife unless she were making some dubious sacrifice).
I’ve sometimes heard that MS leads to a loss of intelligence, that you have an IQ drop after you’re diagnosed. Certainly there are people who get cognitive symptoms that can give rise to a perceived lower intelligence (although this was probably more common before the recent advent of more effective treatments). But even if you didn’t have such problems, there’s little wonder you got “stupider”.
If everyone constantly treated you like completely incompetent nincompoop, eventually you’d probably believe them. Even if you started out all averse – “I am not a nitwit!” – after a while the patronizing “yes, there there”s would get you to just give in. While some don’t consciously act so discouraging these days, people with disabilities are still contending with centuries of engrained behavior.
The cab driver was very nice afterwards, don’t get me wrong. He took a bunch off the meter and apologized profusely. Still, it really hurt. All dressed up 1994 and the wind taken out of my sails…
© 2008 Geoff Gladstone
If you’ve ever enjoyed my writing style or substance, if you’ve ever learned anything from reading this, please donate to the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis and/or the Montel Williams MS Foundation. Just $5 is suggested, but give whatever you think it’s worth/can afford. “Charity” is really buying something meaningful to you (and it ain’t just for the wealthy…).
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