Stories from my childhood and social experiment #1
I've come to a decision. I'm going to start prattling on about random stories from my childhood in an effort to get them written down, share my strangeness, and get some activity on the blog here. My apologies to those who have heard these before and to Nicole, who lived through most of them with me. So, here's story number 1.
When I was in high school, I worked at the Deseret Book in St. Louis. One of my co-workers was in an unfortunate accident that ended with her needing to stay off her leg as much as possible. So when she was tired from being on crutches, she had a wheelchair at work she would sit in to relieve the pain. Well, one day when she wasn't working, I started feeling both lazy and curious. I vowed to my co-workers to spend the rest of my six hour shift in that wheelchair, mostly just to see what would happen.
I don't think more than two people left the store that day without out the ::cough, cough:: "So..." ::concerned look:: "what happened to you?"
On the one hand, I would probably be curious too. Most of the people I know that use wheelchairs on a more permanent basis have a physical impairment that is obvious at a casual glance. The others that are temporary users usually have a cast or some other outward sign of why they are using a wheelchair at the particular moment. Finding a seemingly healthly teenage girl with no visible lower body atrophy would prompt some curiousity. Such is the fun of these social experiments.
On the other hand, who said my physical condition is any of their business?? Would you go up to someone who otherwise looked "normal" but who walked differently and ask them "What happened to you?" out of nowhere and having no relationship with him or her? What has happened to social manners and propriety?? (Ok, I just have to laugh at myself for just giving social manners and propriety any credit. Me, of all people. Hehe..)
But wait, it gets better: most the day I had let people believe whatever they wanted about my reasons for being a wheelchair occupant--accident, hereditary birth defect, whatever. Toward the end of the day, this got a little boring, so I just started telling people the truth: I've been using this wheelchair all day just to see what people would do. The reactions went anywhere from the haha, funny joke (serious), to the haha, funny joke (sarcastic), to the the I condemn you to hell for being so evil as to decieve me. That was an interesting hour of my life, let me tell you.
So why, why, pray tell, does me doing a social experiment make me a horrible, evil, insensitive person? Why don't those insults apply to my accuser, the ::cough, cough:: "What happened to you" for sticking his or her nose into places where it likely has no business being? I'm not saying that someone asking about a physical condition or disability is a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. I just don't understand what I did to wrong in this man's eyes to be such a person.
I guess that's what I really learned about my first social experiment: some people can take a joke/experiment as such, and other people just have their panties in a twist no matter what you do.
When I was in high school, I worked at the Deseret Book in St. Louis. One of my co-workers was in an unfortunate accident that ended with her needing to stay off her leg as much as possible. So when she was tired from being on crutches, she had a wheelchair at work she would sit in to relieve the pain. Well, one day when she wasn't working, I started feeling both lazy and curious. I vowed to my co-workers to spend the rest of my six hour shift in that wheelchair, mostly just to see what would happen.
I don't think more than two people left the store that day without out the ::cough, cough:: "So..." ::concerned look:: "what happened to you?"
On the one hand, I would probably be curious too. Most of the people I know that use wheelchairs on a more permanent basis have a physical impairment that is obvious at a casual glance. The others that are temporary users usually have a cast or some other outward sign of why they are using a wheelchair at the particular moment. Finding a seemingly healthly teenage girl with no visible lower body atrophy would prompt some curiousity. Such is the fun of these social experiments.
On the other hand, who said my physical condition is any of their business?? Would you go up to someone who otherwise looked "normal" but who walked differently and ask them "What happened to you?" out of nowhere and having no relationship with him or her? What has happened to social manners and propriety?? (Ok, I just have to laugh at myself for just giving social manners and propriety any credit. Me, of all people. Hehe..)
But wait, it gets better: most the day I had let people believe whatever they wanted about my reasons for being a wheelchair occupant--accident, hereditary birth defect, whatever. Toward the end of the day, this got a little boring, so I just started telling people the truth: I've been using this wheelchair all day just to see what people would do. The reactions went anywhere from the haha, funny joke (serious), to the haha, funny joke (sarcastic), to the the I condemn you to hell for being so evil as to decieve me. That was an interesting hour of my life, let me tell you.
So why, why, pray tell, does me doing a social experiment make me a horrible, evil, insensitive person? Why don't those insults apply to my accuser, the ::cough, cough:: "What happened to you" for sticking his or her nose into places where it likely has no business being? I'm not saying that someone asking about a physical condition or disability is a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. I just don't understand what I did to wrong in this man's eyes to be such a person.
I guess that's what I really learned about my first social experiment: some people can take a joke/experiment as such, and other people just have their panties in a twist no matter what you do.
posted by Carolyn at 2:54 PM
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