I work with a guy (Doug) who has Cerebral Palsy. He has been in a wheelchair longer than he can remember. He is a great guy and twice a day we go for coffee. We navigate our way to the coffee shop. We cross streets, we need to get through doors in order to get in to the buildings.
Here is what gets me. If I am not careful and take a few steps too far in from of Doug, people will cut him off. They'll force him to turn out of their paths. I'll look back and see Doug facing either hard Left or Hard right trying to avoid people as he is crossing the street. I keep telling Doug that he should stay the course and let his feet guard take care of the people, but he is too much of a nice guy to do that. So what I end up doing now is to stay 2 steps in front of Doug and let people bounce off of me. When he is behind me, I will not move, cause if I move Doug needs to move and sometimes that means nearly falling off the sidewalk (He actually fell of the sidewalk last year and he broke a leg) and I am not going to let that happen. So....in the end I'm the one that looks like an A-Hole but that's OK.
Also, I will hold the door open so that Doug can get into the building and people will rush their way ahead of him. Now when I open the door to let Doug out of a building I will step directly into people's path to make them very aware that they should be allowing the guy in the wheelchair through.
My observation is that as a society we do not tolerate the infirm, the blind etc. There are a couple of blind guys that I see somewhat regularly downtown. I see people cutting them off, blocking their path or obstructing their seeing eye-dog. I can't say that these people are going out of their way to be malicious, but they are lacking the general consideration for these people. People don't understand the challenges that they people have in simply crossing the street and navigating their way around town. People are too focused on themselves that they could be bothered to think of how their actions are affecting anyone else, including those that are blind and in wheelchairs.
Very sad...
2 comments:
I understand where you are coming from. I had to do the same thing for a friend of mine. We went to a Genesis concert together when she was 8 months pregnant. She was kinda hard to miss, but people just kept pushing & crowding into her. I ended up having to kinda "encircle her" with my arms just so that she could get to the escalator (I got lots of dirty looks). At the t-shirt table she stood for over 1/2 an hour (DIRECTLY at the table) waiting to be served. I was getting so frusterated watching her leaning on the table barely able to stand. I could see both customers & sales people looking at her, but no one came to her or offered to let her order before them. I guess they didn't want to take a chance on losing out on the last t-shirt in their size.
People are very inconsiderate these days. It's too bad that people aren't even realizing that they're acting that way, as you mentioned. What ever happend to the Golden Rule?
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