Well as I said, I regretted that scowl; hence the whole reason for starting this thread. The man who offered to help me with my bag was being generally nice and not patronizing. However, because I am constantly inundated with patronization and condescension, I find myself programmed to react a certain way whenever “Hey, you need some help” gets thrown my way. And I know this is something I need to overcome.
So thanks for comprehending the gist of this thread.
Just treat everyone like you would have liked to treat the Meijer guy, how is this difficult?
It’s not at all. I have absolutely no idea why I even started this thread. You’re absolutely right. It’s the simplest, easiest thing in the world with no gray areas. Thank you! 
I (think I) can understand that. However, my problem here is that I just can’t make “the gist of the thread” rhyme with this:
Care to clarify?
Ha, okay, that wasn’t a helpful reply.
Look, this is what I was going for. Speaking for myself, there have been times in my life when after the fact, I find myself wishing I had been nicer to someone.
I honestly can’t think of ANY times when I have thought to myself “wow, I wish I had been more rude / snarkier / snider to that stranger with whom I had a passing encounter and I’m never going to see again.”
The only person really being affected in either situation (annoying offers of help and appreciated offers of help) is you. Do you want or need the stress of being annoyed? You’re the one who will benefit if you develop the habit of tuning it out.
I am specifically noting this is different than a teachable moment. None of these other people are gaining any sort of new awareness or understanding because you have been snide. You are not changing their behavior. They will go through life calling other people “sport” because that’s what they do.
In terms of how to do it, the only thing I know of is to be mindful of it and practice. Figure out what a neutral response would be, and have it ready.
I work with a blind guy, and I’ll often ask “Doin’ okay?” or “Need any help?” to which he replies 98% of the time “Nope, I’m fine.” All comments made very casually.
The other 2% of the time, he’ll ask “I’m in the right place for the shuttle bus, right?” or “Can you grab this box of papers?”
But the over-arching attitude on both sides is “Hey, this is helpful but Not A Big Deal.” I hope that’d be a good antidote to Jaded-ness.
ETA: My God, how I hate “Sport” (or “Killer”? Really? Do they think you’re a 7-yr old?). At the gym, I get “Guy” from a couple of retired men, like “Hey, Guy–how’s it goin’?” which is a little less awkward…
I’d be tempted to ask “I’m sorry, are we Best Buds? Do you get to call me cutesy nicknames?”
To this, and the thread in general, this has been more or less my approach for a while and it tends to make interacting with people SO much easier. I generally like to think, if I don’t know someone’s motivations, always assume the best.
I think it’s a pretty natural reaction to sort of jump to the conclusion that because something directly affects you, then that affecting you must have been part of their motivation in doing it, but it’s overwhelmingly likely in these sorts of scenarios that either you weren’t a part of their thought process at all, and affecting you is completely accidental, or even they meant to do something to help you and just messed up. It’s just not that common that people go out of their way to cause bad things to random people.
Like in this particular case for quoted story, it’s easy to feel like someone stopped in the crosswalk as sort of a screw you to the people in it, but considering that maybe it took a little longer for them to break because of the conditions or they mistakenly pulled a little too far and can’t back up because there’s someone behind them and they feel bad about it, it’s a lot easier to just let it slide.
And then after a while of realizing these things really have nothing to do with you, it becomes pretty easy to let these sorts of things just slide.
More specifically to the OP, I understand your approach about not appreciating help that might only be offered to you because your in a wheelchair. But at the same time, one thing worth keeping in perspective in these sorts of interactions is that these are random strangers who don’t know you and, outside of this interaction, don’t have a particular reason to think that a given person in a wheel chair may be more or less appreciative of an offer to help. Maybe it looked to him like you were struggling more than you really were; hell, maybe he would have made the same offer to someone who wasn’t even in a wheelchair.
So, maybe a person is only offering to help because they want to do their good deed for the day, or maybe they’re just generally trying to be nice to a fellow human being and your wheelchair wasn’t even part of their motivation. You certainly don’t have to accept the help offered, but why does it matter whether they were offering help for potentially self-gratifying reasons or for more generally humanitarian ones? The result is the same. I think if you start thinking of these sorts of offers in the latter case, you’ll find it a lot easier not to be offended and either accept or decline gratiously.
As a somewhat similar example on my part, I was raised to simply be polite, hold the door open for whoever. In general, it doesn’t matter who’s behind me, I’ll hold it open, and I’ll thank people if they do it for me. Sometimes I get weird looks, but whatever. On one case though, I held a door open for a woman just a few steps behind me and rather than just go on, made a point of stopping to lecture me about how she was an independent woman and she didn’t need a man holding the door open for her. I was in shock, and that she was a woman hadn’t even entered my mind, yet still years later, I remember it. Really, why get upset over something so trivial?
Look sport, the thing that should destroy your jadedness is that even if these people are making assclowns of themselves they’re doing it out of a fundamental desire to do the right thing, they’re just retards who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. An assclown’s an assclown, big guy, so it’s not that I’m telling you to take it on the chin and smile but maybe when you’re lying in bed waiting to fall asleep tonight you can remind yourself that most of the doofuses you encounter are ultimately trying to help someone. It’s like even sven digging a well for some German village or whatever the hell she does. They know that she’s doing more harm than good but damn it, it just warms their hearts to see someone trying.
I don’t think this is so much a wheelchair issue. You live in Flint, right? I can understand a badass persona being an asset in a rough area. It can be hard to know when to turn it off. meh, we all have our bad days. I roll my eyes at clueless people behind their back sometimes, even when I know they didn’t do anything wrong. They just did something stupid that happened to piss me off. Meh, bad day.
A person in a chair will also sometimes prefer not to ask for help and struggle anyway, then accept help if offered. I tend to do this myself, as a very independent person, I tend to struggle/juggle with stuff and not ask for help, but will always accept it if offered. Why is it so wrong to try to preempt that and just ask them before I go trotting off and leave them behind? I’m asking because I happen to be right there at that moment, and when that door closes or those apples go rolling all over the place, I’ll already be gone. It’s not like I’m hovering around, waiting for something to happen.
In the case of my friend, it was a crapshoot sometimes, whether a limb would cooperate or not. Some days he wanted to try anyway, and some days he was tired and happy to have people around doing stuff for him. Sorry, but I can’t tell in 3 seconds whether you’re someone like him having a bad day, or if you’re completely able-bodied above the waist. People are approaching you with a myriad of experiences behind them. That’s mine.
So I’m going to just ask. You get what you give, dude. Give me an irritated head shake and an annoyed look, you’ll get a “whatever, jerkface,” from me . Say “no thanks,” and get a “cheers” from me as I go on my way. It’s really up to you.
It doesn’t make it any less irritating when it happens everywhere you go, with everything you, every single day of your life with never any break ever. Ever. So cut me a little fucking slack. I’m a young, healthy man. I have pride and self-esteem, too.
I agree with this. However, I don’t set out to intentionally react in an annoyed manner when someone comes up to me when I am sitting down doing nothing and asks me if I need a hand. Just, after so many times of it happening, it grates on me and I just end up reacting. Consider it a cumulative effect. And that is what I was getting at in my OP. That cumulative effect can make it difficult to recognize those people who aren’t coming up and asking me when I’m sitting and doing nothing at all.
A lot of the “Champ” and “Killer” stuff is probably just people who want very much to help but are uncomfortable with the situation and are awkwardly trying to put themselves at ease. Try and view every offer of help as sincere.
Since I had the baby I’ve been flooded with offers of help up and down stairs, on and off trains, etc. and I believe all of them have been very sincere. About a dozen times though I have had perfect strangers walk up to me and offer to hold my baby (or worse, physically try to take her from me while offering help) while I get my metrocard or shuffle my bags or whatever it was I needed to do at the time. I always respond with a kind, “No thanks, I’m fine” because I know that there is a 99% chance that they meant the offer in the kindest way possible and I don’t want to hurt their feelings. I occasionally want to yell, “No I do not want to give my baby to a potential kidnapper, you dumbass!” but I know that the odds are very, very good they simply wanted to help a woman who looked like she could use a hand so I keep my snark to myself.
Mostly I do this because I am a nice person but also because when I was pregnant the offers for help were nonexistent. It became painfully obvious that people were terrified of being reamed for offering help to a pregnant woman only to find out she wasn’t pregnant, just fat. If all those women had just smiled and said thank you when they refused the help instead of bitching at everyone for insinuating that they might be a little tubby people probably would have been perfectly happy to offer me their seat or their cab or whatever if I needed it when I was pregnant. I don’t want to fuck up life for future moms by being a snarky bitch about stuff right now, you know?
I would have no problem with how you approach things. It sounds very reasonable and empathetic and I wouldn’t get upset with such offers of help. It’s when I am simply wheeling past someone or sitting down waiting somewhere or doing nothing and I get asked such questions that I shake my head (on the inside, at least). Many times I’ve contemplated just responding “Yes please!” and then waiting to see what happens…
Some are, some most certainly aren’t; it’s not too difficult to tell the difference between the two types of people. The types who are just patronizing asses use those nicknames in conjunction with communication styles appropriate for talking to small children, those with mental disabilities or the very old.
I hear you on the cumulative effect. It sounds like it has the potential to be very annoying indeed.
If I’m understanding you correctly, it sounds like you’re looking at how to better assess the situation and react appropriately at the Point of Contact. IMHO, that’s where the cumulative effect is undermining you. Another way of approaching the issue of “avoiding acting jaded” would be purposefully recalibrate at the Point Of Leaving Your House. Before you are even in a situation where you are reacting to someone, try to do a brief little personal assessment and intentionally clean your mental slate. That sounds really self-helpy, sorry, but I do believe that if a person wants to change how they react in such a situation, it’s unlikely to happen in the moment of the encounter.