I totally understand the foreign nature that is interaction with someone using a wheelchair for most people. Do you not think I’ve not become intimately familiar with this aspect of human behavior after spending the past 15 years of my life surrounded by it? I know this better than the back of my hand.
It is also completely irrelevant to what-the-fuck I am venting about here in this thread. Most of you aren’t jerks, I know this. But a fuck-ton of you sure don’t read very well. Or at least don’t read what you don’t want to read very well.
ONE LAST TIME: I AM NOT ANGERED, UPSET OR SADDENED BY OFFERS OF HELP FROM OTHERS. Please read this. And read it again. And then one more time, slowly, just so that it sinks in.
What the issue is here is being treated in the manner that one would treat an 83 year old grandmother, based on absolutely nothing other than the shared common denominator of need of a wheelchair for ambulation.
So I’m not going to even comment on why you are and should not be “uncomfortable” simply being in the fucking presence of a wheelchair users. That’s a different thread.
You are WAY over-thinking it. Stop it. The bolded part is not true! Going beyond, “Need some help?” might be patronizing, but the simple act of asking is not:
“Need some help?”
“No, thanks.”
“OK.”
THE END.
“Need some help?”
“Yes, could you…?? Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
If you wanted a sympathetic lovefest you should have posted in MPSIMS, though it seems like you are mostly getting one anyway. The thing is, I know what you are saying. I don’t get around so well myself, and it’s embarrassing when nice people hold elevators until I can get there. They don’t know that it sometimes feels like they are rubbing my nose in my being old and slow, BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT THEY ARE FEELING. They are just being nice.
For fuck’s sake, get over yourself. You’ve been the guy in a double-wide chair so you have room for the chip on your shoulder since you started here, and though you’ve branched out from there, your OP shows that it’s something that still motivates you. Be a better man and let people be nice without letting it eat at you. You’ll be in that chair for life and it’s time to stop imagining yet another downside to it. And I mean “imagine.” That hygienist didn’t insult you. You just chose to take it that way. The slight was all in your head.
I told you to fuck off because, like is so usual for the groups here who wish to smear me, you were responding to something that wasn’t said and was NOT part of my OP. FOR GOD’S SAKE, ARE YOU SELECTIVELY FUCKING BLIND? I NEVER ONCE EVER IN THIS THREAD MADE ONE SINGLE, NEGATIVE, DISPARAGING REMARK ABOUT PEOPLE OFFERING ME HELP. You simply saw a branch hanging low upon which you could grasp and yank, and yank hard. You never addressed the conversation here.
So please, stick your head in the toilet and flush.
For fucksake, it’s like treating all Latinos as though you know what their attitudes and opinions are because you know someone from Guatemala, or treating all gay people the same because you loved Liberace.
God, this is tedious. Isn’t there any individual enlightenment?
It’s not that she offered him help. It’s that when he said “no thanks, I’m good.” It’s that instead of saying, “okay, cool”, she saw him lift himself into the chair and said, “Oh, good job!” like he was five years old. And then talks about how, “oh, I know that everyone in a wheelchair must need help, you know, because my grandmother was in a wheelchair, and she was old and feeble.” Talking down to the the guy, you know?
It doesn’t take a freaking genius to say, “Hey, do you need help?” Seriously, you don’t have to know someone in a wheelchair to know NOT to talk to them like they’re a kid. I mean, to say things like, “Oh, what a good boy, you handled it all by yourself!!! I’m really proud of you!” C’mon. :dubious:
(For what it’s worth though, I hold doors for everyone. Cuz I’m all polite and shit.)
Yes, this is basically it. Although there was really no need to throw in that last bit about always holding doors for people. It’s totally, utterly unrelated to this discussion).
I’m reminded of two nights ago when some lady grabbed a blind woman by the arm and “helped” (hauled?) her across the street without any sort of prior discussion. I’d just given her directions, and she had declined further assistance other than asking for my assessment of the sidewalk and curb cuts, since it’s been snowy here.
You know, dropzone, I’ve always thought of you as an idiot. But now I realize that “idiot” simply doesn’t do you justice. We need to develop a whole new vocabulary of stupid just to describe how utterly thick you really are.
Yeah, it sucks, but it wasn’t intentional on her part. In my interpretation I gave her the benefit of a doubt, and assumed it was embarrassed yammering by a girl barely out of her teens who knows better now. But she may not. A lot of people are clueless like that, and no amount of bitching about it will fix them. Anyway, for now it seems that Ambivalid will continue to take events like it personally, which will be mentally exhausting if he keeps it up for the rest of his life. It’s a case where I am empathetic, but not sympathetic.
Firstly, I want sympathy from no one. Ever. I live my life in a way that discourages sympathy. And this dental hygienist was in her 50s, not clueless and nowhere near her teen years.
And this is nothing new, this kind of shit happens ALL THE TIME. She wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest. She was totally oblivious to my reaction to her story of her 83 year old granny informing her of the needs of chair users. And part of the reason I am bitching, as the title of my OP indicates, is that this type of “cluelessness” really should not exist in the first place.
Yes, the 83 year old woman and myself (a 35 year old bodybuilder) both use wheelchairs. So if someone saw us sitting side by side, would it be “cluelessness” that accounted for that person’s inability to distinguish the abilities of very, very basic everyday movements from one chair user to the other? To say yes, it’s cluelessness, seems ridiculous and disingenuous to me.
What I see as going on, is that the person who sees the two wheelchair users sitting next to each other; one being a very frail, very old woman, the other being a young, extremely in shape athletic man, simply sees two wheelchairs sitting there with the unfortunate souls trapped in them sitting there. The actual human in the chair is completely interchangeable, it’s the wheelchair itself that people see. Of course this is a sweeping generalization and by no means does this apply to everyone. But it applies to a huge swath of the population. Here in the US.
Thick in what way? I’m honestly curious, which I know means that some people will see as a chance to pile on me, but really, what is wrong with this take on the situation?
Ambivalid is offered help by a person.
He demurs and demonstrates why doesn’t need it.
Instead of just saying, “Oh,” the person says something that can be construed as comparing him with her grannie, which is something he had just demonstrated was a false comparison.
Ambivalid chooses to take it badly, which can be understood because he gets patronized a lot.
I tell him to suck it up because he will have to live with people who don’t know him underestimating his capabilities, and then being accidentally patronizing the rest of his life. They are basing their assumptions on what they are familiar with. Ambivalid is an outlier when it comes to people in wheelchairs,and more power to him. However, he needs a thicker skin. Patronizing kindness is, after all, better than abuse.
She’s 55? Good lord, they’re the worst. No, I’ve known women like her all my life and that old dog will probably never learn. It’s best to let it roll off your back.
It seems to me that he did suck it up. He didn’t yell at the woman, or curse her out, or even make a snide remark – he just had the audacity to have feelings and post a rant about those feelings. Can’t blame a man for having feelings.
