[dropcap2 variation=”teal”]’D[/dropcap2]on’t you have such pretty hair, what pretty hair you have,” the woman croons. “Don’t you think you have such pretty hair? You do. You do, you know.”
The two-year-old and I just look at her, the child in puzzlement and me with growing anger. For it’s not my daughter who’s being spoken to like this in the intimate apparel section of Macys. No, this baby talk is being directed towards my 76-year-old, wheelchair-bound mother, who tries to mouth “Thank you” graciously while this stranger chatters at her in a loud voice as if she is both deaf and a moron.
My mother is neither. She has amazing hearing and a mind still sharp enough to whip my butt at Scrabble, if only she had the energy these days. My mother is also skeletal, unable to control her motorized wheelchair with enough accuracy for me to let her loose in a store, and lacks the breath and control over her lips to be able to verbalize in a way that most people understand.
It’s a sorry state she’s in, but that doesn’t give strangers the right to assume she’s less than she is. After all, as I learned as a journalist, “assume and you make an ass out of u and me.”
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I get that the woman in the store was trying on some level to be kind to my mom, to brighten her day in some manner. At least she didn’t do what the Irish nun visiting Florida did last December. She talked to me about Mom as if she was not sitting right there. I extricated us as soon as I could.
Oh, that the “kindness” didn’t feel so much like being stabbed by pins. Doesn’t hurt that much, but get pricked enough times and you start to bleed. If it feels like this to me, what must it feel like to Mom?
Making assumptions about people by how they look, even based on our past experiences, robs us of opportunities for genuine interaction. How much richer my mother’s life would be if people didn’t assume her mentality based on her disabilities.
I’m with you on this. Sometimes all that is required is a warm smile in the direction of the person who is disabled in some way. Recognition of the person, not their difficulty.