ALSCaregiver.com

I first came down with plantar fascitis in both feet (plus Achilles tendinitis in the right foot) in October of 2008.  I was in a wheelchair for a month and still haven’t gotten over it.  I can’t stand up for more than five minutes at a time, I can’t lift anything heavy and I can’t walk over hard surfaces for any kind of distance.  Which means I still get stuck in the scooter at Wal-Mart.  I’ve been stuck in one since I was able to drive again by myself four and a half months ago.

Despite the fact that the scooters are the slowest….vehicles…on…the…planet, they have allowed me to do a fair amount of social experimentation.  Plus I get the chance to experience some of what my mom has had to go through.  After the first week of dirty looks I started keeping track of how people treated me, and here’s what I found.

The vast majority of people are worthless.

That may sound harsh but it’s true.  Using only my weekly trips to get mom’s groceries, I’ve had quite a bit of experience.  I’m even going to be nice because I’ve run into more people than I’ll actually detail.  The smallest number of people I came across on these trips was ten, which as you know is extremely light traffic at a Wal-Mart at any time.  I only counted the people in the same aisle with me at one time who were actually looking in my direction when I needed something.

Eighteen trips to Wal-Mart is also light because sometimes mom needs something mid week.  But we’ll say I took eighteen trips and counted 180 people all together.  When I say help I mean something like this was happening:  I had to move my cane out of my way, open a door, and reach for something high up, or I had to move my cane out of my way and reach for something that could be three feet above my head.

The vast majority of the time people would watch me while I got up, held the cane, grabbed something off the top shelf, and had to get back on the scooter which doesn’t exactly have a lot of support when you need something to hang onto.  There are some people I distinctly remember however.

One stopped putting dog food cans into her cart in order to lift my bag of dog food onto the scooter in front of me and then wished me a happy day.  One man practically fell all over himself jogging over to grab a can of pears off the top shelf for me.  And after I went through quite an ordeal getting a bottle of orange juice, a woman who happened to show up right at the end of the struggle lit into the woman who’d stood there and shot dirty looks at me instead of asking if I could use some assistance.

I remember those three so well because they were the only ones.  Out of my very light 180 person example, three people ever offered to help me out in any way.  And remember I was being very light with my overall numbers.  That’s three people, period, out of all of them.

Now because I’m 29, some of those people who gave me dirty looks might think I was just gaming the system, even though I carried a cane and could not put any weight on one leg.  Perhaps none of them have ever had any problems ever in their lives and therefore have no empathy or capacity to believe that a 29 year old can actually have an injury.  Maybe that’s just the world we live in, where you remember the nice people because there are so few of them.

I did have a few moments where I had no choice but to ask for help.  The seven times I had to do that, five people were more than happy to give me the help, they just didn’t want to be seen offering it.  One pretended to be answering her cell phone, which mysteriously never rang or vibrated.  And only one flat out looked at me and said no.  But I couldn’t really blame her.  I was wearing a shirt at the time that said, “I love my kitten.”  I wouldn’t have wanted to help me either I guess.  Those kitten lovers can be nasty.

So that’s what I’ve learned in the last four and a half months.  You can run across and come into direct contact with hundreds of people and only three will turn out to be truly decent.  I never knew when my mother was teaching me by example to offer to help people who appear to be struggling, or holding open doors for senior citizens, or comforting little kids who couldn’t find their mothers, that it might make me unique among people when I started doing the same things.

But I’ve learned something else too.  The majority of people may be pretty pitiful, but the three that help you out are the ones to remember.  They make life mean something and prove that not everybody lives only for themselves.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the several young women who made sure to smile at me for no reason.  They should know they’re the most beautiful people on earth, no matter their size, shape or hair color.