This touches on a couple of pet peeves of mine. A woman in Nova Scotia came back to her car one day to find a note chastising her for parking in a handicap space. Now normally I would be right there with whoever left the note. People who are not handicapped parking there really piss me off. In this case, however, I find myself planted firmly against the note-leaver (shut up, it is too a word) as the perceived offender was missing one of here legs. Yup, NO LEG. Well, in all fairness, she was missing half her leg having lost it below the knee in a hit and run. Oops. The young lady wears a prosthetic which was most likely not visible to the note leaver (again, it is still a word).
Now, one might say, how was the note-leaver (word) to know that the woman was actually handicapped? This touches on my other pet peeve: people deciding whether you actually need to park in one of those spots with nothing more than a casual glance. This pisses me off more. Granted, the reason that this one pisses me off more is that I have been on the receiving end of this one quite a lot.
I have a back injury that can affect my leg. Who knew those two things were connected, right? Anyway, Some days I am perfectly ok to walk unassisted and on those days I do not use the handicapped spot. On other days, however, I have to use a cane to keep from kissing the floor. It is not that the floor isn't lovely but I don't really see it in that way. Then there are the really fun days where my leg isn't quite as forthcoming with its intent to stop working and take a nap for no apparent reason. Fortunately, I have gotten to the point where I can usually tell if it is going to be one of those days. When I am having one of those, I do park in the handicapped space.
If I find myself in the good part of an iffy day, I carry my cane with it but don't actually use it until such time as my leg tells me to go fuck myself. And on those good parts I don't even walk with a limp. This, apparently, pisses people off. On one hand, I can understand this, as I said, I hate it when perfectly healthy people park there and I look, perfectly healthy. Well, I look physically healthy anyway, I refuse to comment on my mental health (the voices hate it when I do that). On the other, unless your eyes have been replaced with MRI machines (which, ya know, ouch) you can't really see the damage that necessitates my using those spots.
Despite that rather obvious fact, I constantly get dirty looks and the occasional nasty comment. While it is not really a big deal it does get rather annoying. I realize that any asshole can buy a cane and carry it around, I have gotten the looks and comments when I am actually using my cane! Apparently I am just not handicapped enough to park in that particular space. Now, I have looked all around those spots and I have yet to find a chart or sign that says "You must be this handicapped to park here". I'll keep looking but you would think I would have found it my now.
Back to the actual story: The woman with the prosthetic was so cool about this. She said that she took the note as a complement. In her words:
"I'm kind of flattered about that, because I've been working pretty hard on my walk to make it look natural,"
Just sharing
12 years ago
