A Line Has Been Crossed

I was pushing through the doors, I do this often, I'm fairly quick about it. I was just reaching down to give the final shove out when I heard the heels of shoes clicking to floor behind me. I am rolling through when I am shocked by being slapped on the back of my head, a voice saying angrily, "get out of my way I'm in a hurry," and then a little shove pushed me faster than I wanted to go. I turned to see the back of a woman, who looked young, walking quickly away, texting furiously on her phone. I never saw her  face.

I have been shoved before. The first time it happened I was waiting for Joe outside a movie theatre. I was off to the side. A fellow and his girlfriend came out, he grabbed the handles on the back of the wheelchair shoved me almost violently saying, "You people are always in the way."

I have been barricaded before. The first time was down in the States where a woman stopped right in front of me, her husband behind. I couldn't move. She wanted to heal me. She and her husband wanted to lay hands on me an pray. They were very insistent, so was I. They left when some staff from the store came to assist me.

I have been steered somewhere against my will. The first time it happened I was at a poster session at a conference and a young fellow came over and told me that his teacher wanted me to see their poster, that it would interest me. I said that I would get there but I was going up and down the rows in an organized fashion because I wanted to see them all.  This wasn't the answer he wanted so he just grabbed the handles and started to move me in that direction. I held on to my wheels in protest. I won. AND I skipped the table. I was too afraid to stop.

But ...

I'd never been struck before.

The hit did not physically hurt.

What hurt was the ease with which she did it. No consideration for the fact that she was striking a fellow human being. No thought about what her action might mean to me because hitting me, non-human me-meant nothing to her.

I was hit.

Struck.

Without apology is bad enough.

Without notice is terrifying.