Not contradictory at all. When he said he didn’t need help, the hygienist still slammed into asshole territory by comparing him to her grandmother. She should’ve changed the subject or just shut up.
Yeah, I never said I didn’t. Just explaining to you why so many people argue with you about everything you say.
Personally, it seems to me a sign of maturity and intelligence that a person who was piled on mercilessly (and sometimes justifiably) when first posting here has turned into one of our best and most interesting contributors.
Which is the sign of some idiotic fucking morons.
Are you saying that none of the guys on dating sites are married with children? I thought they ALL were.
One person’s asshole is another person’s idiot, I guess. I’ve worked long and hard to get past taking everything personally, to stop seeing offense where none was intended. Or even where it was intended (still love ya, Miller!).
My wife (more surgery Wednesday) told of a time she didn’t let a patronizing, “When you’re my age you’ll understand the world better,” go. She snapped, “How young do you think I am?” The elderly lady guessed far younger than she is, so she said, “Close enough,” and let it slide. But the dialysis techs are getting on her very last nerve.
Ambi, I apologize if it seemed like I didn’t understand your OP and was a jerk. I’m closer than you know, but too old and tired to fight it for longer than 30 seconds.
Where’s my apology Archeonomist? It seems that I am really the only one deserving one. Is your “politician’s apology” going to be all that I’m left with? Like I said before, I don’t know you at all and your nastiness was totally out of line. If no apology is coming, that says a lot about you. (my bolds)
This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I’ve read in this entire thread. And that’s saying sumn. I have been utterly immersed in the uncomfortable nature of others being around me for fifteen fucking years. I’m well, well aware of your discomfort at even making eye contact with the guy in the wheelchair. You fucking moron.
Nah. You’re more deserving of one, but these comments were directed at me:
Not that I’m losing sleep over them, but Archie was kind of a jerk to multiple people. You caught the brunt of it of course, but not all of it, and I suspect the group apology was an attempt to snag a bulk rate.
I missed this post the first time around. Great post.
russian heel, could you please cut and paste these comments I’ve made in this thread that would make people feel as if they needed to walk “on eggshells” around me? Please do this. Thanks. 
Also, in response to your second paragraph here, I have absolutely, never once IN MY LIFE, snapped at someone simply for offering me help. NEVER. So I don’t understand where all these notions are coming from. They are caricatures that certain members here have created so that they can bash the “angry cripple”; which is not at all who I am as a person.
That really sucks. I’m sorry life is such a pain in the ass sometimes.
It can be hard to figure out to address people with disabilities sometimes. A dear friend of mine died of breast cancer last September. She was only in her 40’s so it was far too early for her to die. It took four years for the cancer to kill her. During that time, many of us were torn between wanting to help her as much as possible and wanting to respect her boundaries at the same time. It was not always easy to avoid being patronizing if only accidentally at times.
I haven’t paid attention to this thread for a while, but I actually meant that as an apology to all those I offended. Not the politicians ‘sorry if you felt offended’ - that was not at all the point. Since that was not clear:
Ambivalid, I am sorry I was such a jerk to you and I apologize for it. It’s not the kind of behaviour I should wish to be remembered for.
Thank you, I appreciate that. Apology accepted.
Just curious about something.
Ambivalid, were you drunk posting at some point during this thread? Because your replies to me were kind of incoherent.
First you replied with this:
Then, less than an hour later, you replied to my same post with this:
How did it go from “I agree with this” to an unbelievable tragedy?
Good Lord, your exhausting. What NOW?
Where did I patronize the disabled here?
Ergo if you have a defect, then you are defective. Im sure you know what a dictionary is look it up.
Well, Im glad we can now acknowledge that fact that MANY people see the wheelchair immediately, and focus on that. Thats not because they are bad people, or theres something wrong with the person in the wheelchair: its human nature and the sooner we can get that out of the way, the further ahead we can move in creating positive interaction between those that use wheelchairs and those that don’t.
Well, aren’t YOU so much better and more special than many of us.
Not a good comparison. I have no qualms about offending an able bodied person for whatever reason; someone in a wheelchair? Of course I want to go the extra mile to make them not feel uncomfortable.
I never said that can’t happen. But I think it human nature to notice the wheelchair FIRST, then hopefully focus on the person once the parameters of the interaction have been set. And if a relationship develops, Im sure the wheelchair becomes less and less part of the interaction.
Robot Arm is just putting words in my mouth, because I would have reacted the same way even if the person in the wheelchair was rude. Now, maybe later I would have told my wife, “Gee I tried to help out a person in a wheelchair, and they were kind of a dick back to me.” and the next time, it would be in the back of my mind, “Wow. If I offer this person some help, are they going to tear my head off?”. Courtesy is a two way street.
I took your comment about being snapped at as a jumping off point and extended it to another hypothetical situation I was trying to describe. I never attributed any words or ideas to you.
No, I was not drunk posting. I don’t drink, for one thing. I think I must have misattributed that post to the wrong quote? I’m not sure. That reply is kind of incoherent to me too. I honestly can’t explain it. I’ve been 100% sober of any sort of intoxicant the entire time I’ve been posting in this thread.
Just a comment as to a person having a “defect” making a person “defective”. That is just so in need of education. A person having a deformity does not make a person “deformed”. A defect does not define the person with that defect. A person with a defect is a person with a defect, not a defective person. Just as someone who can’t walk due to a spinal cord injury is not “a wheelchair bound person”, they are “a person who uses a wheelchair”. It may seem pendantic but it is far from it. It puts the person first before the illness, disability, etc.
"
I have few outlets for hobbies these days. Tilting at windmills on line just happens to be fairly inexpensive and convenient.
Where have you NOT? That’s a big part of the problem - you have no clue that you’re being patronizing. You are blind to your offensive behavior and attitudes.
Nope. That’s like saying if you have a disability you are a disability… and nothing more. Then again, if that’s how you see things it goes a long way to explaining what YOUR defect is…
Bullshit. That’s like saying it’s human nature to see skin color and focus on that, and it’s not because someone is a bad person that initially all they can do is react to skin color and they just can’t help that.
Bullshit. ALL you see, apparently, is the disability - the wheelchair, the walker, the white cane, the whatever. You don’t see the person. You see a wheelchair that happens to have a body in it, not a person who happens to use a wheelchair.
Not only that, you want a simple, easy, one-size-fits-all rule for interacting with any possible [del]wheelchair[/del] person you might encounter. It will NEVER happen… because all those people you’re trying to lump together are different people with different problems, capabilities, histories, and personalities… just like everybody else.
Better than you at any rate.
Ah. So, you’re treating them different solely because they’re in a wheelchair? Why? If you did offend someone in a wheelchair what, exactly, do you fear they will do? Leap up and attack you with the Elite Cripple Superpowers?
On top of that, you are being told in thread that your “extra mile” is, in fact, one of the things that is offensive. At which point you flip out and threaten to go to the opposite extreme. The only thing I can conclude is that you’re pissed off that disabled people don’t meekly accept whatever YOU decide their treatment should be.
Want to make someone in a wheelchair feel comfortable? Treat them like everyone else. Make eye contact. Make small talk. As them about the weather or politics or whatever. DON’T ostentatiously go out of your way to demonstrate whatever it is that you think you’re demonstrating.
“Hopefully” focus on the person? WTF? Hopefully?
Holy shit, if I am EVER disabled I want you far, far away from me. Like, maybe, Pluto or something. Goddamn, I’m offended and I’m in the able-bodied camp.
WTF are “the parameters of the interaction” anyway? Are you incapable of simply talking to people?
I stopped referring to people as “wheelchair bound” or “confined to a wheelchair” when someone with a spinal cord injury pointed out to me that, on the contrary, her wheelchair was liberating - without it, she’d be restricted to a dragging crawl to get about. Her chair enabled her to go places under her own power.
It was one of those ah-ha! moments you get in life. My viewpoint shifted and never went back. Instead of “oh, poor thing, stuck in a chair” is was “Thank Og we have wheelchairs so she’s not stuck in the house all day.”
Of course, not everyone who uses a wheelchair thinks about wheelchairs that way, as noted, disabled people are as varied in outlook as anyone else.
There’s always stamps, knitting and fly fishing.
Im still waiting for one example. It’s a simple question.
Wow. That was so clever. You really showed ME.
When it comes to skin color, Im color blind. Thats a fact. When someone enters the room in a wheelchair, especially one not properly designed for ADA compliance, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Sorry Im not afraid to say what most people are thinking, and lying about how “they see the person, not the wheelchair”. THAT is such bullshit.
Oh yes you are. I shall make it my goal to strive to be as wonderful and perfect as you are. And Im SUUUUURE your not lying about “seeing the person, not the wheelchair”. Come on show some balls and admit its normal to notice the wheelchair when someone comes into the room.
“Cripple”. Nice. Not too offensive. Oh let me guess, you were being facetious.
Im not pissed off at anybody. The OP was the one that seemed pissed off.
Thats exactly what I do. I can only tell;you what is going on in my head subconsciously in the interaction. That doesn’t make me a bad person. How I handle the situation is what makes me the good person. And in many ways a better person than you because I have the guts to tell the truth about human nature.
On your way to Pluto, build a 40 billion mile long bridge and get over yourself.
I don’t have time to give you a sociology lesson. Buy a book and read up on it, take up wood carving, and stop being such a fucking self-righteous spaz.
I love my wheelchair. I never get tired and haven’t had a moment’s worry about falling and getting hurt since I started using the chair almost 30 years ago.
It’s nothing to get ones panties in a bunch about.
I get the feeling (that is, I suspect) that many people without disability view wheelchairs as:
- A horrible fate that they are glad is not their lot in life
- A boogey monster
- A device which might spontaneously combust (see breaking bad) into flames o’ fire if the poor soul inside of it gets agitated enough.
Yes this is hyperbolic. But when you feel great meeting or knowing someone who just treats you LIKE THE PERSON YOU ARE, and you feel glad and happy and that it is unusual, then you realize just how crappy most of your other interactions have been. It is hard to explain how it feels when people routinely avoid eye contact. Don’t we all need eye contact? I won’t drool; I promise.
A salesperson in victoria secret once asked my friend if I would like a bra she had in hand.
When you can’t have an opinion about YOUR OWN FREAKING LINGERIE…
When the nice lady at the college bookstore has to ask your assistant if you need any other books and you’re going for your PhD…
I mean, people are dumb. That’s a fact.
I haven’t been on straight dope long, but this seems like a ranty bbq topic if ever there was one. Stuff that you’ve had enough of.