A physically disabled girl walks into a bar...
Just kidding. But while we're on the subject, I'd like to take this time to explain some of the things that have happened to me in the last week, before someone realized I was physically disabled.
Take Tuesday for example. It was like any other Tuesday. I had three classes that day, but I left super early in order to get a handicap parking spot. As I am pulling into my handicap parking spot (rather, I backed in, because the space they give you is impossible to back out of without the chance of running over another student), I received many odd stares. Scratch that. Probably thirty passerby's looked at me with the same eyes I get as if I had just pulled into a handicap spot at Target.
'What the heck is this girl doing, pulling into a handicap spot, when she is (as I can see) not handicapped?'
And even as I put my placard up, many of them still stared at me. Their gaze was unwavering. It was kind of like that scene in Mean Girls where Cady went and ate her lunch in the bathroom, because no one wanted to sit with her.
All eyes were on her. All eyes were on me.
It wasn't until I stepped out of my car, and my prosthetic leg became visible, that people stopped staring.
Amazing, isn't it?
Now, I know, I know. People abuse the system all the time. That's probably why places like Disneyland/Disneyworld and Universal Studios, have cracked down on their accessibility issue. For example, when I was in high school, I went to Disneyland with a friend, and we were in line for Grizzly Bear Rapids. And this was before the rules had changed... Anyway, we were in line, and the way that worked is that someone with a disability who could not stand or wait in the normal line, got to go through the exit. It wasn't cutting. Often times, there was a line in the exit too. But it did cut down the waiting time by a landslide. But again, my friend and I were waiting in the exit line, and we see the most amazingly disgusting thing I have ever witnessed.
It was a group of teenagers, or young adults that were not much older than us, and as they were exiting the ride, the girl who had been in the wheelchair with us in line, had gotten out, and her friend got in the wheelchair, and they went their happy way.
They were switching off people. Who wants to sit in the chair for this ride? Or who wants to be injured/physically disabled for the Tower of Terror line? You? Or You? Well, I mean in the end, it doesn't quite matter who sits in the wheelchair, since you people will be switching off anyway.
I had never been so disgusted in my life.
And while I could go on and on about this, I rather just leave my readers with one thing:
If you abuse the system set in to help those who truly need it, then you are certainly a more horrible person than you make yourself to believe that you are. Grow up.
And if you don't stop abusing the system, then those who really need it, get screwed because you were too lazy to use the physicality you were born with, than those who were less fortunate. So stop it.
Be kind. And be smart.
