First Encounters

First Encounter Jitters

Putting the best wheel forward

Life is full of encounters. First encounters are particularly important.

New beginnings are a big deal, and they can come at anytime, so one should always be prepared to handle them appropriately, especially if you use a wheelchair.

I’m not saying that as a wheelchair user I willingly accept that burden. I’m just saying I am aware that it’s there, watching, waiting, lurking. Like anyone else, I dislike smiling at someone who is disgusted by my existence, by my disability.

When meeting people for the first time, I always try to put my best foot, or wheel, forward, offering the best possible representation of myself. Everyone does it. It’s called tact: a virile form of manipulation.

But if I’m in a pissy mood or if I’ve had a bad day, trying to make others feel comfortable is the last thing on my mind. Sometimes I just need to be me, plain old anonymous me.

For wheelchair users, it has been pontificated by those in the Ivory Tower that the responsibility of smoothing out first encounters with the nondisabled falls on the shoulders of the (wheelchair) pusher. We are required to be kind, affable, and humorous, so as to put the Normals (nondisabled folks) at ease.

It is true that most nondisabled people, when confronted for the first time by the horror of having to communicate with a wheelchair user, react like awkward little ducks, skidding around on thin ice next to a 500-pound gorilla. Or else they are the gorilla and it is the chair user who must do the skidding. As for myself, I find the nondisabled to be the quackers.

During such encounters, I tend to throw my weight around, beat on my chest, toss some poop, and grunt my satisfaction as I watch the ice start to crack.

Generally, I’m a likable kind of guy. After ten years of using a wheelchair, though, I’ve come to expect others—even other cripples—to underestimate and second-guess my value and capabilities as a human. I know it sounds pessimistic, but after one has gone through the same old laughable/lachrymose episode a hundred times or so, well, the Pavlovian dog in me starts to salivate when the bell rings.

I hate being stereotyped, pitied, or ‘assisted.’ However, there have been times when I have used these horribly constricting attitudes and perceptions to my advantage, say, to get out of a ticket.

A few years back (the statute of limitations has ran out, y’all), a sheriff’s deputy pulled me over for speeding on the Beltway at, oh, around ninety.

By the time he caught up with me, I had already pulled to the side of the road. Thinking fast (not wanting to go to jail), I poured half a bottle of water on my crotch. When the corpulent officer waddled up to the truck with his gun drawn, I told him I was a paraplegic with a pressure sore and I had pissed myself and needed to get home before my decubitus ulcer became worse.

He shined his flashlight on my wet pants, never getting too close, and said, “Okay. Go ahead…just slow down.”

What a bad little gimp I am.

Of course I took advantage of the situation, but I’m not the scared little duck, remember? If Normals want to believe the myth of disability, if they allow their fear to dictate their response, I will trip them and laugh when they fall. If they become disabled after falling, I’ll laugh even harder, slap them on the back, and welcome them to the real world.

First impressions? Don’t sweat’em. I guarantee you the (temporarily) nondisabled folks are more nervous than you.

"The opinions and comments of Life Is Full columnists are completely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the magazine"