Current mood:	grumpy
Entry tags:	about me, blog about, online: culture

Blogging About Disability
I don't think anything I attempt to write about will match up to what others dealing with more severe things going on will write. So I'm going to admit right now that this is my selfish list.

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Dear Baltimore,

Thank you for making wheelchair lift buses a standard part of your fleet. But why, WHY, do you insist on making the lift happen in the front of the bus? Everytime a wheelchair needs to get on, I end up feeling like it's a game of competing disabilities as all the old and injured people need to get up, and shuffle to the back so that the wheel chair can pass the FRONT seats you deem as disability seating, so that the wheelchair can pass without running over anyone's toes or cracking their legs.

We all stand there, gripping our canes and various poles to stay straight, grinding our teeth against pain, liver spots and flush red wounds and pain sweat, while the wheelchair beep beeps it's way up and then is manoeuvred into place - - in the front of the bus.

I remember NYC buses and how the lift was by the backdoor and so a wheelchair could immediately move into its slot, leaving all the disabled at the front, seated, without having to balance empathy and consideration alongside their own discomfort.

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Dear Boston,

Finding an elevator to the subway should not be a game of hide and seek. Finding an exit without a lot of steps should be second nature. Not needing assistance because of your combination of steps haphazardly here, with some escalators there and who knows what elsewhere - should be immediate because you want your inhabitants to feel like full Bostonians, full citizens. People with pain and injuries and wheelchair actually do have money to spend downtown, and at Harvard Square and other places.

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Dear Generic Apt Building,

With your lovely cobblestone walkway to the front door. It's great that the elevator is wide enough, and the hallways and the apt's front door. But have you ever tried to turn around twice in your bathrooms? A chair wouldn't fit. A cane barely does. And the necessity for a sturdy bar in the bathroom is not an actual luxury. And those pretty cobblestones, I don't know about wheelchairs, but you try navigating those things when your feet aren't quite listening to your brain. And what's with having the trash chute so far away from all the apartments? Must my apt be funky because I'm in too much pain to trudge all around to the opposite side of the building and stretch up and then try to balance on one foot while pushing my trash down the chute because you won't install a simple low standing drop down?

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Dear Generic Mariotte Hotel Room,

I love your suites. Kitchen and bathroom and sitting room and bedroom does actually make time away from home easier to deal with. But uhm, have you noticed that your kitchen counter doesn't actually have room to fit a wheelchair if someone were to attempt to cook? Or that all your cupboards are - - up top? Yes, I'm not in a wheelchair, but I felt the pain of having to open and stretch up to those cupboards for every fork and plate and where you hid the toaster. And I had to deal with the tiny two sometimes three burner stove, that was supposedly flat without an oven for space underneath for a chair - except there was no chair space, just a pipe. And the bigger burners are all in the back - so how does one dangerously stretch with a heavy pot ? And why is the sink still so damn high?

Moreover, why is it someone can't use your bathrooms normally without them stopping up and overflowing? Each and every damn time? Do you not expect a healthy digestive process? Do you not expect an unhealthy one requiring more uses? Do normal, perfect, people who go visiting from one place to another never expel waste from their rear ends??

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Dear Supermarket Delivery,

You suck. I can't even begin to discuss how discouraging it is for your service to fail away the way it has. It used to be a blessing, now it's a curse. I had to stop using you, because I never knew what you'd leave out. So much for making it easy for those who find it difficult to shop for themselves.

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Dear Walmart/Target/Whatever,

Why are those little carts that are meant for the disabled always so frigging hard to comprehend. Why must whomever is watching over them look at me funny when I want to use one. You never seem to ask for some sort of disabled ID - yet your employees judge my need for help getting around the store, to the point where I don't use them and in pain, shuffle your aisles until I realize I'm just hurting myself and leave without buying anything. Also how is someone using those carts supposed to get something off the high shelves?

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Ok, selfish rant (Willow Complains About It All) over.