What I want. What I really, really want.
Is a trip without a story to tell.
What I want, is to check in, get on, get off, get car, go to hotel. All without drama. No one really likes travel. But I've found that as a disabled person I have to put up with the indignities of travel combined with the ignomy of receiving service from others. Needing help is bad enough, taking help is worse.
I've had so many good experiences but man I have had bad experiences. Right now, before getting in the car to go to the airport, all I can think of are the bad expereinces. They haunt me.
One of the guys I used to work with, a fellow with Down Syndrome, sometimes decided not to go out somewhere planned, he'd say, 'I don't feel like facing it today.' And I'd happily encourage him. How dim I was in those days. I so get it now. Some days, I just don't feel like facing the world. I can easily see how some become willing shut ins. I'm safe here in my place. I'm safe from the stares of strangers and the hostile help from those who are there to assist me.
So I hope my post tomorrow begins with, 'Nothing much happened on our trip to London ...'
Inside me there is a growing paranoia that needs to be quelled, not by medication, but by the experience of a nice trip full of nice people. I hope everyone who wears a uniform tomorrow also wears a smile. I hope that everyone charged with helping, does. I pray that every situation is dealt with kindly and the only turbulence be that which occurs in the air.
You know what I want?
I want experience to make a deposit in the trust account. I'd like to use it for moments that matter, like between me and God, not moments that don't like between me and the guy who pushes my chair at the airport - the one that thinks he's God.
7 comments:
Safe travel to you, Dave. Safe, gentle, easy, no-big-deal travel to you.
--Gentle Reader
May all your travels be ordinary. And may all the "interesting" things that happen be good, positive ones.
Although I love your story telling ability, I hope this trip is without stories to tell.
BTW, I just finished reading The Lottery and it was incredible. Wow
Your post touched me - may your travels have fair winds and calm seas - what we sailors say...
I just canceled a trip I'd long been waiting for because, in part, I couldn't face dealing with the issues I was facing as a disabled traveler.
Safe trip.
When I was a 100 pounds heavier then today, traveling by plane was an absolute nightmare. I remember one time, in a small commuters plane, 13 seats, and I had asked, while in the small airport building, for a seat belt extension. Once on board, no seat belt extension. The co-pilot who acted as stewardess comes to me and insists that I buckle my belt. There was no way I could. He goes into the airport - and already, the 12 other passengers are sighing about the delay, and comes back, and says they have none, but that the plane will not leave until I am buckled up. And here is the most humiliating scene ever, of this guy, pulling on the belt, and pushing my body back into the seat, trying to buckle that belt, and it just won't work. And this goes on and on and on for what felt like an eternity. Thank god I was sitting up front, and didn't have to look at people looking at me. But I could feel their stare in the back of my head. They were about to turn into an angry mob when I whispered to the ear of the steward : please, let's just pretend that it is buckled, OK ?!!!!!!
I've been making my own deposits. I go to yoga, spinning classes and quiet meditation.
There I can replenish myself to help others.
Deposits are good.
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