New Places, Same Old Problems

Full day! Got ready in record time to meet a friend wnho took us both out for breakfast this morning in one of the many diners around here--this one with a decidedly Hipster slant:) Turned out to be delicious and inexpensive; avocado toast with diced tomatoes, splitting one poached egg between all four slices of wheat toast because I needed lotsa protein! But I didn't want too much cholesterol, so I compromised. Nice long chat over bottomless coffees, stuffed in with an ever increasing amount of fellow patrons. I asked that we go out to this particular diner today because just FOR today, 10% of the total bill went to the Inner City Christian Federation, where the outreach minister from my church is a fixture. This makes it a cause very close to my heart, and one that I would feel terrible if I didn't support! So I was only too happy to try this fairly new establishment--especially when the food was so good! No one held the door for me going out or coming in, which was absolutely okay. I can handle my own doors, thank you very much! But sometimes I almost expect that people see me coming from inside the restaurant. And they would all know the door is heavy and the threshold slanted, making entry kinda tricky:( I don't blame anyone, and it certainly didn't keep me from having a nice breakfast:) The server did bring my walker to me from the front of the building once we were ready to leave! Kudos to Matchbox Diner in East Town for being new to me but welcoming nonetheless. Serendipitously spent about 2 hours back downtown after that, learning about symmetrical art and the nearness of God, at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) http://www.artmuseumgr.org/, where I'd ALSO never been before today! And it was so timely, saving me from a pretty serious little rain shower that soaked the downtown area. I've been told almost every point West has been getting deluged for days; our soaking was just the last gasp of that weather. I'll save you the minutiae of running errands after that, except to say that I took the bus everywhere, and it was its typical self. I felt almost looked at with suspicion by one driver, who asked to see the Paratransit ID I carry with me for rides on the City bus TWICE, and then kept asking me questions about where exactly I was going. If I look at this objectively, I think it's possible she's new, and just didn't recognize me, and therefore I made her nervous. I've found that somehow, I make a lot of people nervous (devilish, Grinchy grin)...just by how I carry myself, the way I don't divulge a lot about myself to chatters on the bus, and the way I don't fit whatever preconceived notion they have of some one dependent on a walker. But the waitress at Matchbox wasn't the least bit nervous! Is it a generational thing (the server was quite a few years younger than the driver), or a cultural thing? Maybe in the server's trendy, diverse neighborhood she was just more used to seeing all sorts of people than this bus driver, and so was more at ease around them, treating them like anyone else. Maybe it was just that the bus driver didn't want to miss any of the "steps" for dealing with disabled people that her recent training to be a city bus driver had taught her, and so adhered to the with a little bit more anxiety than more seasoned drivers. I don't know! I'm really not here to conduct social research--although that happens without a person having to seek it out, just by having a disability and choosing to be part of the workaday world. Overall a very nice day, and I'm very happy!