She's got legs....

Disable: to make incapable or ineffective; especially : to deprive of physical, moral, or intellectual strength

Disabled: incapacitated by illness or injury; also : physically or mentally impaired in a way that substantially limits activity especially in relation to employment or education

Handicap: a disadvantage that makes achievement unusually difficult sometimes offensive : a physical disability

Handicapped: having a physical or mental disability; also : of or reserved for handicapped persons handicapped parking spaces


The above is how Mirriam-Webster defines these four words. At no time does it say that you are only disabled if you don't have the use of your legs.

A couple of week ago I was in that famous "take over the wallyworld" store we all know and I had to make use of the... anyway I had to go. As I enter the restroom there was these two much older ladies and one of them was having to explain to the other how to flush the toilet. You know those new electronic one that decides when you are through for you and tries to suck you down if your not. Anyway she couldn't figure out how it works and how to lock the stall door. Eventually the urge to go was greater than learning something new and so she went on in to the handicap stall because she told the other women her knees wouldn't let her bend down far enough for the regular stall toilets. Woman #2 told her she would meet her outside.

So we were both in our stalls when I heard the door open and someone came in. I heard her say loudly "Is there anyone in the Handicap stall?" Well woman #1 didn't answer and before she could even if she had wanted to, woman #3 who I was soon to find out was in a wheelchair had wheeled herself back and pushed the handicap stall door open as woman #1 had not had time to figure how to use the lock. Woman #1 did an embarrassed kind of laugh and said just a minute.

To my astonishment this is what woman #3 said "You have legs so you shouldn't even be in there". I like to have fell off of the....... well anyway lets say I was stunned. After "feeling the breeze between my knees" as Ed of Ed, Edd, and Eddy is known for saying, and realizing I hadn't gotten up quickly enough, I would like to tell you that I barged out there and confronted woman #3. I would like to tell you that I stood up for woman #1 who had been so cheerful and almost childllike. But I can't. I can't because for some reason my whole life I have been one to "smooth things over", "don't rock the boat", "leave sleeping dogs lie". It's only later like now that I get truly angry and want to go back and say something, anything.

As I was going around to the sinks to wash my hands , the woman in the wheelchair was sitting there and when I looked at her she actually had the nerve to glare at me!

It got me to thinking about what a disability is and who is to say whether one type of disability is more important over another. I know women who are disabled but have full use of their legs (my mother included). And then there are women like me who know that once you hit a certain weight, the stalls in the "Great and O-Mighty Walmart are just very uncomfortable to get into. I guess you either have to be bone skinny or legless to use their restrooms. Maybe I'm not being fair here but it angers me that people assume because you don't have a visible handicap you must be perfect. So as for woman #3 I just say a special prayer for her that she opens her eyes and mind to the fact that she isn't the only one in her situation.

Any by the way, she had two legs also.