Eyes Wide Open

Good (hot) Day! Went to church today (I the last week or two, and it feels like its been a year!)and was approached by a woman who joined last year, whom I featured in the church newsletter at the time:) It was great to catch up chat for a bit, and I have to admit I do enjoy being approached in my solitude! After this very week's church fellowship, I went home and discovered an invite to a friend's family reunion! Touched as I was with THAT thoughtfulness, I had to decline 'cause I'm otherwise engaged that day, long before her Noontime party. It's wonderful to have people in my life who treat me like any old friend they have; you wouldn't believe how rare that is. Or how difficult to find! There are lots and lots of sympathetic, pitying individuals from church or otherwise who think everything I do must be SO hard for me. Every week I get invitations to or from church whether the weather is bearable or not, which today it most certainly is not! I declined the offer of a ride though; I must admit it embarrasses me to accept a ride home, out of somebody's way, in the big "scary" downtown area, even if the weather IS bad. It's only two blocks, and I'm a lot sturdier than I look. No shrinking violet here! Even if the flowery dress I wore today says otherwise;) In fact on the way home, the sun felt so good after many days indoors that I considered taking myself to Brunch somewhere! But then I ran into one of the challenges faced by the Disabled all year round, but whose inconvenience is amplified by the sweltering season: steps. My first choice restaurant for brunch downtown is up three or four cement steps, which in this heat would seem like 13,000. There's an elevator inside of an adjoining building that takes me conveniently to the restaurant's coffee counter during the week, but I've learned through trial and error that the adjoining building isn't open on Sundays. Then there's a place farther afield recently retro-fit with a nice new ramp, but IT'S in the back of the building, which would require an extra walk all the way around after I walked the few blocks there. Again, in this heat, that's prohibitive:( So I just went back to my place and threw together a lunch that was not delicious, but satisfying. Some one I follow on Twitter lamented that her wheelchair couldn't "jump the curb" (not her words but mine) to reach a grassy knoll where they were giving out free popsicles during the UK heat wave. She and I messaged back and forth for a little while and she confessed she's way too shy to ask somebody to go up and get her an "ice lolly" as they call them there, but she did ride her wheelchair back and forth in front of the stand half a dozen times. Why didn't SOMEBODY notice her? Why didn't somebody say "hmmm, it's hot...I bet that girl would like a free popsicle"? I'll tell you why: collective blindness. Consentual blindness. There's a group of able bodies having fun, hanging out--a random act of kindness toward a girl in wheelchair would require them all to see and acknowledge her--the same as if somebody were to help me carry my walker up the three or four steps! I don't think they'd have minded, in hers or my case. But it would require them to stop what they were doing, or in my case their Sunday work routine, and deal with an unfamiliar situation. I don't think a lot of people are willing to step out of their comfort zones very often, especially when they're having fun. It's such a shame, 'cause we could ALL have fun, if their pride would let them help people who are different. Of course, maybe it's not a pride thing. Maybe the problem is that people only see what they want to see.