If I only knew then what I know now...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is a recollection of one of my very first post-accident memories, after I came home from the hospital. I had moved back in with my parents and younger sisters, the older of which had graduated HS that year and was having her open house that weekend (at the house).

Well I had just gotten out of the hospital, so I didn’t yet have my new driver’s license and I was still a cigarette smoker. And it being the day of my sister’s open house, there were all kinds of people everywhere around the house getting things ready and I felt claustrophopic and needed some space, so I decided to go on a stroll around the block and smoke a cigarette.

Well my parents house is located at the top of a small hill. When I began to descend down the street going down the hill, my chair began to pick up speed. The street ends at a cross street at the bottom of the hill. As I was going down the street, picking up speed, I noticed a small boy (perhaps 8 or 9) getting ready to cross the street that I was fast coming down.

This kid saw me, in my chair, moving fast, right towards him, and freaked out. His eyes got wide and he just took off. I was kinda amused by this, I couldn’t help myself. He was pretty far away by this point, so I started waving my arms and shouting, “I’m not chasing you, it’s ok, it’s ok!” But, I guess all he saw was some guy in a wheelchair shouting and waving his arms because all it did was make him run away even faster. Oh well, it made me laugh and I just went on my way to where I was going to relax for a few minutes and smoke my cigarette.

After about 10 or 15 minutes I began to make my way back around the block to my parents house. Because it is alot smoother on the street (and it is not dangerous as it is a residential street) that the sidewalk, I would wheel myself down the middle of the street, being careful to move off to the side if a car came about. Well I did just that when a minivan slowly started driving down the street, waving them by, letting them know I saw them.

However, the minivan kept up it’s slow crawl until it was right next to me. There it came to a stop and the driver’s window came down. It was a middle aged man driving the van, looking very hostile, and the very first words out of his mouth are, “So you like chasing little kids, you fucker!?!” WHA??? Ohhh, the kid!!! "No, no, no, you don’t understand, man, I was not (and I was smiling and laughing as I began trying to explain)…He interrupted me: “I don’t care if you have two legs that don’t work, I’ll make it so you have two arms that don’t work too!” “We don’t need perverts like you roaming the streets looking for kids to prey on!” :eek::confused::eek::confused:

Now keep in mind, I am BRAND NEW to the wheelchair and the life. I was STUNNED! I didn’t react well. :dubious: I yelled my address and told him to follow me there if he really had a problem. I told him to get out of his van if he really had a problem. I started spitting on his van. I was so sickened and upset. I mean, I can understand why an 8yr old boy would react that way, it’s an EIGHT YR OLD BOY. But a GROWN MAN?! Thinking that I am a predator just because I am in a wheelchair. Looking back on it now, I see it as a sort of “taste of things to come” (albeit a rather extreme one) in my life in a wheelchair dealing with stupid.

2

This story reminds me of this thread. The only point to your story that I see is that parents shouldn’t always believe junior’s version of what happened without getting further details, just as in the linked thread.

Why do you think he thought you were a predator *because *you are in a wheelchair? It sounds to me he thought you were a predator *despite *being in a wheelchair. He was not treating you differently because of your handicap. You should have been glad that he was so nondiscriminatory in thinking you were a predator. :slight_smile:

3

Yeah, if anything he COULD have thought “oh, it’s just a harmless cripple, what harm could HE do?” I think if any of us found ourselves accelerating towards a child waving our arms we could end up in a similar situation (at least if you’re male).

4

How on earth do you arrive at this conclusion?
mmm

5

Yep – in this day and age, people assume that any strange male alone is a child molestor. Which is wrong, of course, but people are paranoid.

6

My situation was rather unique. The child had most likely never seen a wheelchair before, much less one barreling at him on the street. THAT is what scared him; if it had been a walking man (or person) or someone on a bike or other machine, the child, having seen such sights plenty of times before, wouldn’t have panicked. This I completely understand. When he got home, he told his father about the bad man on wheels.

The father should have used a bit of common sense when he assessed the situation.

7

How do you know that? The kid might have been afraid of all strange men moving towards him at a fast clip.

This I will grant you is true, unfortunately common sense is rarer than the name would suggest.

8

He may not have blinked at a bicycle, I’ll admit, but if I was randomly sprinting down the street he probably would have. Now, your situation was a bit unique – most of us wouldn’t have a reason to uncontrollably go fast, but the child wasn’t scared of you due to your wheelchair, he was scared because of the situation your wheelchair put you in. Big difference. I’m sure if I had done the same thing because I was learning to skateboard, or lost control of roller blades I could have found myself in a similar situation. It just so happens that an object you require for basic mobility happens to have similar drawbacks, making this scenario easier/more common.

Now, when the father saw you in a wheelchair he should have used common sense, and figured out that you probably just lost control (or at least asked) since it was down a hill. But people freak out, it happens. You probably weren’t being discriminated against, at least not for being handicapped.

9

No doubt the stupid and paranoid walk among us and I understand you’re a generally angry guy…but the situation escalated so much that you started spitting on his van?

Yeah, the guy overreacted but so did you. Hopefully you’ve learned to take the higher road since. I don’t get the assumption that you were perceived as a predator because you are in a wheelchair. If anything, Mr. Paranoid Dad assumed you were a predator because you’re a man. In the same situation, I don’t imagine I, as a middle-aged women, would be perceived that way, in or out of a wheelchair.

10

Yeah, I did spit on his van. He was saying truly awful things to me, telling me he was going to make it so I had two arms that didn’t work along with my two legs; and I was brand new to life in a wheelchair. And the guy didn’t overreact, he acted in the complete wrong way. “Hmm, here’s a young guy, well dressed, in this nice residential neighborhood, who happens to be in a wheelchair rolling down the sidewalk.” “Now my 8yr old son, who doesn’t know what a wheelchair is, obviously mistook the intimidating sight of it coming in his direction as something which it really wasn’t.” (Granted this is a bit idealistic but c’mon)

11

I’m not excusing his reaction, not at all.

Maybe this is wrong-thinking on my part, but here’s a probably shitty analogy: I own Rottweilers and foster dogs for rescues, often pit bulls - because I live near Flint and pits are what we get. Right or wrong, there are myriad misconceptions and assumptions made about these breeds. So, I feel that I have to adhere to a higher standard of responsibility as a dog owner/caretaker, even in the face of gross stupidity.

This may be a stupid analogy because you’re not a breed of dog, you’re a person. But I imagine that people with disabilities have to deal with ignorance a lot, and taking the higher road is probably a more adaptive strategy that getting really pissed off and letting it get to you.

12

Oh yes, I agree there. This was my very very first such encounter EVER though. I was just weeks out of the hospital. Rest assured, I’ve done no more van-spitting since! :smiley:

13

I’m curious about the thread title. If you’d known then what you know now… what would have been different?

14

Oh good. :slight_smile: And what Miller asked.

15

Well for starters, I wouldn’t have spat on said van. :smiley:

But really, being 11 years older and having navigated the world in a chair for those 11 years, I would have known how to deal with him better. After he initially cuts me off to tell me he’s going to hurt me and all, I now would just calmly sit there staring at him until he was finished with his tirade. Now I’m sure it would have been a bit of a snarky stare, but a silent stare nonetheless. Then, because we were just around the corner from my house, I’d offer him to come discuss the matter with my father if he’d like. I most definitely wouldn’t have spat on his van.

16

Just like newly disabled people don’t always manage the chair correctly when confronted by a new situation, parents sometimes get it wrong when a new situation catches them by surprise. They don’t teach “Giving wheelchair-bound maniacs the benefit of the doubt” in antenatal classes. You accidently scared the bejesus out of the kid, he ran to Dad in a panic and described the situation as he perceived it - scaring the bejesus out of Dad in the process - and Dad did what Dads do when they think a pervert, psycho or jerk has tried to hurt their kid. You were the only person in the situation who knew all the facts - how’s Dad supposed to know you haven’t been in the chair long, or that yelling, arm-waving man in apparent pursuit isn’t a threat to his eight year old? And then you go and react to a child’s terror with laughter. If it looks like a jerk and it rolls like a jerk…

If you can’t see how threatening you appeared to this family, then you have no business ever complaining about others lacking empathy again.

17

I am incredulous that you don’t think a 8- or 9-year-old had ever seen someone in a wheelchair before. I can promise you that you are very wrong on that.

18

You are completely wrong here. It’s late and i don’t want to write any more but you are totally wrong. Dad is supposed to know these things by APPROACHING ME LIKE AN ADULT. And I wasn’t laughing at the child’s terror, I was kind of chuckling to myself as I realized what was happening. At first, I had no idea who this irate asshole was coming up to me accusing me of chasing little kids. I was trying to be friendly and amiable. Calling me a jerk is coming out of nowhere. I did NOT appear threatening to this man’s family. Give me a fucking break. What’s with the name calling here? In addition to calling me a jerk, you refer to me as “wheelchair-bound maniac”. Why?

19

I can promise you that you are very wrong on that. I mean an active wheelchair being used out in the realworld. I see it every single day, the wide-eyed, slack-jawed, stopped-in-their-tracks looks on the faces of young kids who pass by me in my wheelchair. It is a pretty unmistakably look. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Now certain areas, metropolitan areas, may have young kids exposed to more things like wheelchair users at an earlier age; but around here, uh-uh. And I could be wrong, I’m very bad at guessing ages, he could have been 7. All I know is he was a small child.

20

You spat on his car, but you know all about behaving like an adult. Sure you do.

I did NOT call you a jerk. I said “If it looks like a jerk and rolls like a jerk…”. Have you never heard the phrase “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck - then it must be a duck”? To the father, your behaviour must have looked and sounded jerkish, and he assumed you were a jerk.

Again, I didn’t call you any names and I didn’t call you a wheelchair-bound maniac. I said that they don’t teach you how to give wheelchair-bound maniacs the benefit of the doubt in antenatal classes. If you have a frightened child trying to describe the experience of having someone baring down on them at high speed in a wheelchair while yelling and waving their arms, your perception is going to be that you are dealing with a wheelchair-bound maniac. The right thing to do is calmly, rationally assess the situation and determine if that wheelchair-bound guy is actually a maniac, but people don’t always get it right every time, especially when it comes to the safety of their children.

You can see my sympathy is not with you, and I’ll explain why: as a parent, I can picture myself being so startled by my panicking child’s garbled explanation of what sounds like an unprovoked attack by a stranger that I overreact and yell at someone who intended the child no harm and only frightened him by accident, but I cannot ever imagine myself in a situation where a confrontation would lead to me spitting on someone’s car. What kind of adult does that? Combined with your bizarre insistence that they wouldn’t have thought you were a pervert if you weren’t disabled, and all the repititions of BUT I WAS NEW TO THE WHEELCHAIR as if they somehow should have known, and your underscoring this as though you were the victim and this is just another example of the World Vs. People In Wheelchairs without even the slightest acknowledgement that maybe you scared a small child quite a lot and perhaps he’s deserving of some sympathy too…