A Ridiculously Good Blog Post

So, I had a confrontation over something I didn't care about because of something I did. Does that make sense? Well, maybe I'd better explain. The headquarters for the Canadian Branch of Scientology is near to where we live. Near enough that we occasion by there at least two or three times a week. They often have people out on the street pressing passers-by into going in for an IQ test of some kind. Other times they simply pass out some kind of literature about their organization. Now I have my own private thoughts about Scientology, let it simply be said I would turn down the offer of a IQ test and I wouldn't want to take the literature. But they don't know that.

Why?

Because we've gone by there hundreds of times in the years that we have lived here and I have never once been offered a test or a brochure. They often ask Joe, who is right beside me, but act like I don't exist on their planet - which, I just realized, might just be the case. Anyways, over the last few weeks it's begun to really piss me off. Like when I was in school and there was a clique that I didn't want to be in but because I was never asked they never got to know that I wouldn't join them if I could. They couldn't be stung by my rejection because they got there first. Ouch. Yes, I'm petty sometimes. And so are you, over different things I'm sure, but we've all got the 'petty gene' it comes with the 'human not ape' gene. But the bigger issue for me was purposeful, or what seem purposeful, exclusion of people with disabilities. You don't have to look far for an issue to fight over if you are a wheelchair user.

As you can guess we were sailing buy and a woman who approached proselytizing like a bored waitress making minimum wage in a diner with backed up toilets offered a brochure to Joe. I bristled but did nothing. We were going to check the menu on a restaurant nearby to see if they had anything vegetarian in case we wanted to go there sometime. We looked. They did. We turned to come back. I scooted up ahead aiming for said proselytizer. I told her what I told you that they never, ever, ever, offered me information. I wanted to know if Scientology was deeply prejudiced against people with disabilities. If she'd been chewing gum, she'd have cracked it in the pause before speaking. 'Um, no,' she said. 'Hmmmm,' I said, 'then followers of Scientology must be uniformly bigoted against people with disabilities.' 'Um, no,' she said and offered me a brochure.

'Um, no,' I said and felt ridiculously good about it.