Yesterday after dinner I parked off to the side, out of everyone's way, so the others could go down the dock and look at the boats and look in the water for frogs and fish and foul. I am a bit addicted to a game on my phone so, when they got out of my range of sight, I pulled the phone out and began to play. I heard a very loud, very deep, drunken voice say, "How about a bear hug?" I turned to see him attempting to climb up on a wooden statue of a bear. He thought himself hilarious. So did the man with him, bent over laughing. The woman with them was standing, watching like she'd seen this shit before and wishing the taxi to arrive.
I was next, I knew I would be. One of the fellows came beside me, a boozy breath followed the "Hey, man, nice to meet you." over to me. Then, for some incredible reason I will never under stand he reached out and touched me on my stomach. I reacted, I couldn't not, it was an uncontrolled spasm. He saw it and started fumbling apologies and questions. The other guy then saw patting my stomach as a challenge and he headed over, his hand got near me and I pushed it away. A new set of apologies came on to of the others still flowing.
They talked to each other and couldn't figure out what they'd done wrong. They were back. "Does it hurt when we touch you there?" "No," I said, "It doesn't physically hurt." Then one of them in a blinding flash of insight, said, while patting his stomach too, "Sometimes I feet fat too." I looked over at him with hostile incredulity. A face so plain he could read it. "That's what you think this is about? That's what you think?"
They stared at me.
Lost.
"I don't like strangers touching me, it's called 'boundaries,' man, 'boundaries'." They stared at me mystified. Absolutely mystified. Then the tone turned. "You don't need to get like that man, we're just trying to be friendly. You're the one sitting here alone in your wheelchair. Thought we'd brighten your day."
"Great," I thought, "kids in hospitals get tickets to the circus and all I get are these two fucking clowns."
I looked at him hard and said, "I'm not alone, the dock is inaccessible, I'm in a wheelchair, I'm just waiting, in the quiet for them to come back. And at that moment they did.
As we rolled away, I said to Joe, "I am a magnet, and absolute magnet for this kind of shit." He nodded and said, "Just remember,that magnet got me too."
Score one for the magnet. But could someone find the power source and shut the damn thing off.
7 comments:
To be absolutely fair, if you had been any one - a small child, a woman, a heaven-forbid pregnant woman, a person of a different ethnicity, and, if they were drunk enough, ANYONE, they would have done something similar.
It IS infuriating when other people are clueless idiots - adults should be able to control their own behavior in public.
That Joe of yours is a treasure. You are very protective of his privacy - a prime consideration for a married blogger - but I smile whenever you do mention him.
The problem with drunks is that you never know when they're going to turn nasty - they're literally out of control, and I think laws should hold them MORE responsible for what they do after they have chosen to get inebriated, rather than letting them off when they kill someone with a car, for example, because they 'lacked mental capacity to form intent.'
Anyway, hope it didn't spoil your evening - but I know these things leave a bad taste.
Alicia
Yech...sorry that happened, what a pair of eejits. :( sorry Dave.
Dave,
I am sorry for the idiot magnet.
But I am glad you got Joe!
With very respectful greetings
Julia :-)
Ick. I'm sorry you had to deal with that. :P
-- Littlewolf
I am so sick of being targeted by my weight. It seems to be the reason for everything wrong in my life. You were much more polite than I would have been. Such good self-control. You may be a magnet for shit, but you are a lightening rod for change and education.
Things like that also happen to *me* a lot, too.
I am also in a powerchair.
Or the reverse -- sometimes I swear I have a Romulan Cloaking device installed! (People trip over or step over me s if they don't see me.)
::Sympathy::
WTF! There is so much wrong with this picture--thinking your day needed brightening up just because you're in a wheelchair, thinking so much of themselves that they thought they were brightening your day, touching you without your say-so, dismissing and mocking your stated boundaries...just ugh! to all of it.
By the way, I was at a conference this past weekend where your name and your work came up several times. A small handful of us were trading "isn't he awesome!" comments, specifically around your work on sexualities and people with intellectual disabilities.
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