Jayrolling!

Photo description: Police officer giving a person in a wheelchair a ticket. Officer resting his foot on the foot rest of the wheelchair.

 It was Sunday, traffic on Yonge Street was a little heavier than we expected, but we waited for the right moment. We had been shopping at a little grocery store on the east side of Yonge and were heading home. To do this legally we would have had to go up a block, cross at the lights and come back a block and then head west. Our decision was to wait until it was safe and then zip across the street. Jaywalking for one, jayrolling for the other.

When the break came, Joe was able to zip straight across and up the curb onto the sidewalk. I had to go a much longer distance because the corner we were at didn't have a corner directly opposite, so it made my ride a long diagonal. Longer, shmonger, I am faster in my chair than Joe is on two feet.

As I was approaching the corner, a woman was walking southbound. She called out to me, "You shouldn't be doing that, it's dangerous."

Now, here's the thing.

I don't understand why she's talking to me at all. I don't understand what mechanism in her mind made it OK for her to enter into my life and make commentary about it at all. this has flustered me and confused me from the moment I became disabled. What about me, what about the wheelchair, gives people this kind of permission. I don't understand.

I said to her, "Why are you commenting on me and, " pointing at Joe, "not him." I wanted her to understand, though I begin to doubt that people can see what they see as caring as prejudice instead. She said, "Because he knows what he's doing."

Now, here's the thing.

This is the core of a very big problem. Very. Big. I think that there is an assumption that people with disabilities, of any stripe, are in desperate need of parenting on a constant and continual basis. An assumption that advice and helpful commentary are what's needed in a situation because disabled people are never, really, quite an adult. Never really quite independent. Never really quite aware of the rules and the dangers of every day life.

I think this attitude permeates society.

Accepting the adulthood of people with disabilities would mean having to accept us as having voices that need listening to, experiences that are real and lives that have meaning. None of that is convenient to the present push to have us seen as less worthy: of support; of health care; of life itself.

My voice, saying that my life in a wheelchair is a vibrant one, can't be discounted as easily if I capable of, say, deciding to cross the street on my own.