We Are Not A Display
by Railroad 

You can file this under the category of, -- Has This Ever Happened To You.  My IS is reluctant to go shopping anymore.  She feels uncomfortable in the stores.  I can't imagine what could make her feel that way, can you? 

I mean, it couldn't be the time we were in the store and were almost run over by the knuckle-dragging single-eyebrow mouth-breather who couldn't look down and had to take up the middle two-thirds of a two-person-wide aisle and stops for NO ONE.

It couldn't be the time that we had to wait for the gossipers to finish up talking while they blocked the aisle and pointedly did NOT look at the lady in the wheelchair and her companion. 

It couldn't be the time that a group of rocket scientists decided to have a goo-goo convention in the middle of the only wheelchair ramp for a quarter mile and refused to move out of the way, and didn't even pause to help when the wheelchair wheel broke and almost pitched Mrs. Railroad face-first onto the sidewalk. 

Could it be that nationally-known chain store that crowds its clothes racks so close together that an average person on feet, let alone a person on a wheelchair, can't squeeze between them? How about the sales staff who seem to evaporate when a wheelchair enters their section of a department store? -- Excuse me, miss, I know you absolutely HAVE to go to lunch at this VERY INSTANT because the corned beef will go sour and the yogurt might get warm and the energy drink will weaken, but can you tell me if you carry this in her size?  Miss?  Ma'am?  Young lady?  Hey¦.HEY! 

It's to be expected in some stores.  They don't have any sales staff to begin with.  Fifty million dollars worth of merchandise, and probably three clerks in the whole store: one in a back room, watching proceedings by video camera; one talking to friends on a cell phone while standing near a cash register; and one on a break.   

Perhaps it's the wheelchair-accessible restrooms, the kind with a door equipped with a 5-ton spring-loaded closer designed for closing cargo hatches on supertankers.  Watching via the security camera as wheelchair people get squashed must be loads of fun. 

Or the experience of wheeling into a crowded ladies room, doing your business, and head for the door, only to have them all leave, leaving you trapped until the next person comes in, thus opening the door for you. 

Or perhaps it's the sight of the red face of the WS pushing, pulling, lifting, dragging, and maneuvering to get you past these obstacles.  (Not so unlikely, friends and neighbors, some ISs DO notice.) 

Then of course there's the other part of the experience " the Journey Out.  Your IS hasn't been out of the house in a while, or perhaps doesn't recall it. -- I didn't know THAT was there!  When did THAT go up?!  I explain to her that it's been up for months and that she's seen it before.  She looks at me like I'm lying. -- Why didn't you TELL me that Smith's was closed?!  One thing I do NOT say is, -- You never went there before, (referring to the Good Old Days), -- why would you care NOW? 

I kind of think perhaps it's the work involved getting ready to go.  By the time the two of us have busted our behinds for an hour or two to get her -- presentable, we're both exhausted.  There should a Devine Decree limiting the weight of the IS, keeping it below 75% of the lifting ability of the WS.  There should also be strict rules on which parts of the body are not allowed to be paralyzed or impaired.  I want to serve on that committee some day, I know what I'm talking about. 

One fear that has faded with time was the fear of running into people she used to work with.  To experience the carefully-avoided eye contact, the carefully-directed eyes, the stumbling and groping for words they don't mean about things they can't understand.  To be asked how you are and have them cut you off a few seconds into your answer so they can tell you about their successes.  (Oh, yeah, THAT'LL cheer her up!  Tell her about your winning in the triathlon last weekend!) 

Aside from bristling at anything that hurts or degrades my wife, and harboring a newly-minted prejudice against unthinking and inconsiderate people, I have a vested interest in these experiences.   Because when the smoke clears and the dust settles and the door closes on the last of the Mohicans, Mrs. Railroad and I look each other in the eye, and she allows me to share in her reactions. 

On a good day, she just tells me about it, and maybe we laugh it off or have a good bitch session and blow it off.  On a bad day, it will trigger the worst kind of reaction, and it may be a week or more before the storm blows over.  Either way, the Well Spouse gets to collect and carry out all the garbage. 

So there's a new burger joint that opened up, one of a chain owned by a rich singer in Key West; I told her about it, and got a very noncommittal, -- Uh-huh.  I won't bother asking her about going out to dinner.  This evening I got some really lean ground beef and some Kaiser rolls, spiced up the meat, made some huge burgers, and we enjoyed them " she in her nightie and I in my jeans, while the newsman entertained us. 

And to Lenny, our faithful friend who hates it when we go out, we were not on display at all; to the contrary, we were fascinating to him, riveting, in fact, as he sat nearby and prayed for a bit of meat to fall on the floor.