An Unpredictable Life

8. A Little Courtesy Goes A Long Way

A Little Courtesy Goes A Long Way

8

Now, I don't know about you but when you go shopping, when you go out and want to have fun, having some person's butt right in level with your face is not exactly what you want to have.

It does not, and I can't emphasise this enough, does not make for a pleasant day out. Forgetting that everything in shops are situated at a height for people standing up. They stick all the rubbish down the bottom, because let's face it, no-one wants to go bending down all the time in every shop for all the goodies. It's just the way it is.

But when you have the chance to go out, to get excited about going shopping, for birthday's or anniversaries and Christmas, it is not ideal to sit there in your wheelchair and find yourself following some random person you don't know unable to do anything but stare at their butt, because it's right in your face. And I mean perfect lining…why is that?

Did the guy who invented wheelchairs like the woman's butt that was in front of him and decide that it was a view he wanted all the time, so decided it was the best situation for everyone? I mean really, as a girl I would not complain if I had to follow around Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt all day when I was in a wheelchair behind them; not many girls would. But let's face facts, there is no way in hell or high water that I'm going to be sitting in a wheelchair following around either of those gorgeous men around a shopping mall.

No matter how much I wish I could, it's never going to happen. So why is it that everyone in a wheelchair is destined to this view, unless of course they're expected to break their neck trying to avoid such a thing?

Forgetting for a moment that most shopping centres and tiny little shops like those around Princess Street are not exactly designed with us wheelchair toting people in mind, why is it that people think we can't do anything for ourselves? Of course, there are those people who can't. People who simply cannot take full care of themselves and can't be fully together for the sake of other people and their ego's. But that does not mean that we're all entirely incapable of doing anything ourselves.

For instance, my mother and I went shopping a while back, to East Kilbride which has the best shopping centre ever created. It boasts a plaque that states exactly this - you can fit 25 football pitches inside their shopping centre…I mean 25. It took us five hours to go just to the shops we wanted to go to, and of course, spending that amount of time on my feet, for me at this moment is impossible. I'd drop like a pin. So I was in my wheelchair and I was exhausted before we even got there (I don't sleep well) and we went into one shop for photo paper and this woman, the one who served us was completely insane.

We knew what we wanted but had more options than we had expected so we were going to take a few minutes to make up our minds as to which was more 'purse friendly'. Because after five hours you have no idea how much money is drained out your pocket, before you know it it's more than you ever though you wanted to spend in one week, never mind one day. But this woman wouldn't listen. She kept showing us things and she obviously thought she knew exactly what was best for us, except she didn't.

She ended up confusing me so much by explaining things that I was neither awake enough to understand or capable of (don't know if I mentioned this, I lose track of conversations really easily and explanations only make things worse…so I'm practically incapable of making decisions). She just kept coming at me with all this nonsense that didn't make an ounce of sense to me. When I tried to pass the decision making off to my mum, the woman started explaining all over again. I was just about in tears because she had me so confused and I felt so stupid.