Everyone has their own unique reaction when they see someone in a wheelchair. Some will look away and avoid eye-contact. Others will stare open-mouthed like you’re a zoo animal. And then you have the folks who get creeped out when they see a wheelchair, whether it reminds them of their own immortality or of a mean Aunt they once had. And then you have the in-your-face totally annoying friendly stranger, who is only nice because of your disability.
The overly-nice stranger’s propensity for sweetness usually comes from two different places: 1) They’re nice because it makes them feel good and they want to do their good deed for the day (most likely religious). Or 2) They are nice out of pity, feeling so bad for you and your situation that they treat you like a 5 year old on her way to her first day in kindergarten. As someone who can read people pretty well and was able-bodied for quite some time before her injury, I can’t stand it when people who don’t know me from Adam feign extreme niceness; the creepy “too nice” nice.
I prefer realness, not fakeness, and to me these people’s over-the-top sweet platitudes are about as real as a fake plant in a low-brow hotel lobby. Fake niceness actually makes me feel worse. But here’s the predicament: How do you respond to these people without coming across as a rude wheelchair-person who “must be angry with their situation?” This is a fine line to follow, and a line I have yet to easily find. For the last two months now, I’ve been plagued by a new neighbor lady who should be the torch-bearer for “those who are nice to the crippled.”
Every time my neighbor and I cross paths she smiles like Ronald McDonald, keeps her eyes eerily fixated on me and asks me some pretty darn condescending questions and/or comments in front of our other neighbors, not only making it worse but embarrassing to boot. I’ll make small talk with her, but have yet to confront her annoying personality. I’m thinking I may have to end up ignoring her, like the old man who works at the corner gas station that even though he knows his religious talk of me “getting a new body; much better than the one I have” has pissed me off to the point where he’s been verbally reprimanded by his boss, he still tries to talk to me in exciting mannerisms about the weather or anything else whenever I stop to get gas.
I don’t mean to bite the hand that feeds. A lot of things in my life are only there because of the generosity of the nice people who feel for my situation, and I’m forever grateful, but the emotional stress this causes – be nice and swallow my pride or tell the nice people, “Hey, your niceness is not necessary” and forever be known as a bitch – is a conundrum I have yet to find a perfect solution for.
Here is a somewhat related post that I wrote about how the UK embraces disability culture like no one else.
How would you deal with this?
Photo courtesy of Jared Eberhardt
Polite people remain polite, no matter what the circumstances are. I think that it all depends on where a person’s attention is: on themselves or on the other person.