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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