Disabled????? So What!

I was 14 yrs. old and was standing patiently in the dinner cue at school. Behind me was another boy I had seen around over the last two years, but compared to the rest of my year he was relatively new. I had also noticed that he could occasionally by quite rude, yet somehow he managed to maintain what seemed to be a loyal friendship group. More than I can say for some. I myself had very loyal friends yet only a small group of them.

As I stood there waiting for my daily choice of homogenised fat and hand made slop I realised that the afore mentioned boy was talking to me from behind. 'Move out the way', he said, whilst I noticed there was at least 30 people in front of both of us. Suffice to say I ignored him. To my surprise he then started beeping me with the built in electronic horn that was on the arm of his wheel chair, I again ignored this wondering why and how he thought he could ask me to move out the way when clearly we were both so far back that it was going to be at least 25 minutes before we managed to fill our empty stomachs. He then took what I consider to be a drastic and un-called for action by ramming me in the back of my ankle with the steel support that was just below where his feet laid. This clearly hurt so I turn around and told him to piss off and wait like the rest of us in a controlled but not calm voice. At this point all hell broke loose, five of the hardest girls in my year launched an attack on me, shouting and kicking me in the shins, saying I was a bully and how dare I shout at Graham (false name) when he was clearly disabled! These girls were quite hard and I daren't fight back for fear of the repercussions when their boyfriends who were 4 years above heard about it and decided to use me as an excuse to show their girls how able they were to kick my ass. I managed to talk everyone down and instead of telling their boyfriends, they decided to tell our head of year. Lame if you ask me but then I suppose detention was better that a kick in.

At this stage I should say that this post is not about disabled people, at all in fact, Its about equality. Fare enough if someone has particular trouble with certain activities and they need help, lets of course help them as much as we can, like we would an able-bodied person, but apart from that I believe we are all equal.

I sat in the head of year's office waiting for her to arrive, I am sure they do this deliberately, just to get the nerves and adrenalin pumped up for student and teacher. She started with, 'I understand you were shouting at Graham, our student who is in a wheel chair?'. My reply was quite sharp and to the point, 'Um.. yes miss but what has the wheelchair got to do with it?' I then explained that he had been outrageously rude and had rammed me from behind. I protested that if I had done the same I wouldn't be able to get away with it and I would probably find myself back in this office getting a rollocking. I was told by my ever more tense head-of-year that people in wheelchairs are allowed to push into the cue in this school! WHAT?????? 'No offence', I said, 'but how is that in any way fair'. I had to stand in line all day to get my crappy gruel that we called food whilst Graham was allowed to sit and push straight ahead of other able-bodied students. This was discrimination against able-bodied people.

I didn't win, I was told that the school had a policy and I had to stick to it. I couldn't believe how much the school had over compensated for his disability. I commend anyone who spends time helping others, especially those who are less fortunate, and yes if Graham had walking problems for example, or sight issues, or some other disability that meant he had trouble waiting in line I would have understood the need for this policy, but he was sitting down!!!!!! when the rest of us able-bodied students had to stand and wait, he should maybe have been sent to the back as his dinner cue experience was clearly less stressful than mine.

A note to readers: This was in 1994 and I would hope that since then schools and such are much more careful in how they implement policies like these. I don't want to get into a heavy discussion about equality as this was just one experience I had as a kid. However I see it all the time in other scenarios, where the majority have over-compensated for a specific equality issue, like race, or gender, and the end result is a policy that actually falls in the opposing direction and leans in favour of the party we originally wanted to be equal. I often tell girls on dates that I believed in equal rights, and therefore maybe they could open the door for me and offer to pay for dinner! Sorry ladies, I'm an equalist ;)