It’s always stunning to see or hear about someone being so cruel to people with disabilities, but the fact is, it happens all the time. The problem is that these horrible people probably don’t realize they’re being horrible. Maybe they’re in a hurry or they’re impatient, or whatever. However, sometimes the things that come out of people’s mouths (or keyboards) is incomprehensible. Surely no one gets up in the morning thinking, “I’m going to be unkind to someone with a disability today,” yet it happens. How should the rest of us handle it when we see this happening? Should we say something or mind our own business? In the story below, you’ll see how one person handled it. This works for me. Don’t be silent when you have a chance to speak up for someone else. Enjoy this story.
I was waiting in line to buy tickets at a movie theater, and there was a fellow in front of me with cerebral palsy (or MS, or some other horrible thing that puts you in a chair and f***s up your body).
It was taking a while. I watched this guy struggle to open an envelope by holding it with his teeth and using his one functional hand. I wasn’t sure what to do, or if offering to help would be insulting, so I just chilled. He was doing it before the person in front of him was done with the cashier anyway, and it looked like he’d done this before.
He gets up to the counter and it takes him a minute to get out his Regal card and pay for the ticket. The woman behind me started to make (loud) snide remarks about how “People like that shouldn’t be allowed to go to the movies.”
I was enraged. It was a kind of anger I’ve never experienced before. At first I didn’t know what to do. She said something else, and the fellow in front of me paused. At that moment I turned around and said to her “We should all be so lucky to wait in this line on our own two feet. Keep your disingenuous thoughts to yourself.”
The woman looked shocked and the guy she was with leaned over to his date and said “Daaaaaaaaamn…” His date was looking at me like she’d just seen a ghost.
The woman behind me shut her mouth. It took a moment longer for the guy to finish up at the counter, but when I got there the girl at the register said I could go to any movie I wanted, that the gentleman in front of me had paid for me and said “thanks.”
If you’re out there, disabled guy, I didn’t do it looking for a reward, I did it because sometimes people are real asshats, and no one deserves to experience what you did today. Thanks for the movie ticket, though. Captain America: Civil War was awesome.
