[il-talk] Article by Deborah Kendrick

[Deborah Kent Stein]

Deborah Kendrick is a freelance writer and active member of the NFB of Ohio.  

Deborah Kendrick commentary: When meeting someone with a disability, some cross the

line

Sunday, June 5, 2011 03:11 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

There's a certain kind of assault unique to people with visible disabilities. It's

an assault on privacy, an overstepping of boundaries, an occasional aberration that

can ruin your whole day.

"Sooo, what happened

to you?" is the bluntest, most raw form of the invasion. And it usually catches

you off guard. Imagine yourself daydreaming at the swimming pool or riding the bus

home from work, and suddenly a stranger is in your face with such a question.

The sniper-like surprises can occur anywhere. And sometimes they're more specifically

directed.

In an elevator or a doctor's waiting room, a stranger might suddenly ask me, "Is

your husband blind, too, or what?"

Or maybe I'm at an awards luncheon, and after such getting-to-know-you topics as

the salad dressing and the hot rolls have been exhausted, the guy beside me might

casually inquire, "How'd you lose your sight?"

It doesn't happen often, but most people with a disability that can be seen

know the experience. Gripped by curiosity, complete strangers or acquaintances abruptly

demand personal information in a way they would ordinarily consider unthinkable.

How did disability strike? Was it accident or disease? And how do you function in

such a state?

I'm not talking about the constructive curiosity that helps us communicate better

with someone who has a disability. It's OK to ask how one gets the wheelchair into

the car, how a guide dog knows to find the door or if a deaf person is able to read

your lips. What's

not

OK is to fire intimate questions of personal history at someone you barely know.

Think about it. Would you ask a black person what if feels like to be black? A white

person if her spouse is white? Or a fat person how long he's been that way?

One Vietnam veteran who uses a wheelchair told me that people will actually ask him

if his children are biologically his own. What is it, I'd like to know, about that

wheelchair that gives people the idea they have permission to interrogate a man about

his sex life?

For me, one of the most offensive inquiries is when I'm asked if my husband is blind,

too.

What is the translation here? First, that I must have a husband because I couldn't

possibly take care of myself? And, next, if my husband has normal vision, the interloper

can feel relieved that there must be, after all, someone behind the scenes to take

care of me? Or, if my husband is blind or has some other disability, that we are

appropriately keeping to our own kind? Marrying within the ranks?

Does this sound angry? Well, maybe just exasperated, but here's the reality: People

with disabilities can sometimes

be

angry. They can also feel humiliation, amusement, rage and pain, just as their nondisabled

peers do.

People with disabilities come in all racial, sexual and economic packages, and they

have good days and bad ones.

For most of us, though, a time arrives when the disability itself takes a decided

back seat to life. The nuts and bolts of living take priority over specific limitations.

Don't get me wrong: It's not that we forget that we can't see or run or speak quite

the same as others. You never forget entirely - because disability, like any personal

trait, is a factor that, when you have it, becomes integrated into your total personality.

But once the adaptations have been learned and the

abilities discovered, disability generally loses its center-stage status.

People with disabilities, just like people without them, spend emotion and energy

in three basic areas: our work, our play and our relationships with others. Remember

that the next time you meet someone with a disability - and, if the urge still washes

over you to ask how they "got that way," ask yourself instead how you got to be so

rude and find a more sociable approach to conversation.

Deborah Kendrick is a Cincinnati writer and advocate for people with disabilities.

dkkendrick at earthlink.net



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