As I write this, it’s been a week since I took a weird fall and sprained my foot. In pursuit of maximizing and value-adding to my daily morning walk, something that writing and thinking about re-humaning should have cautioned me against, I’ve been varying three-minutes-on/three-minutes-off of a normal pace and a fast walking for 30 minutes. I don’t have any kind of fancy watch or even a basic pedometer, nor do I want one, so I have just been keeping time intervals using the stopwatch on my phone, which is clumsy at times. On top of that, I like to listen to a podcast while exercising (two birds, one scone and all that) and the episode ended without me having set up another in the queue so, keeping an eye on the clock during the fast interval and trying to simultaneously find the next thing I wanted to listen to, well, I fell. Again, my efforts to re-human should have warned me against pretty much everything I was doing, but we are imperfect vessels. It wasn’t down steps or anything like that, but it was a fast, hard fall and I injured my foot, having it bend under me, in the process. The next day, with it looking like Fred Flintstone’s foot and hurting like a mo-fo, I went to urgent care, got an exam, took some x-rays, received a boot and the analysis that I didn’t have a break but a sprain. Two weeks in the boot, elevated when not in the boot, and all should be good.
The swelling has gone down considerably and my foot now resembles more of a water-retaining Wilma than Fred (hey, she was my Halloween costume straight from Woolworth’s bagged costume section circa 1977) and it hurts a lot less. Having never had a sprained ankle before, the experience of wearing a boot was new and awkward but thems the breaks, or, in this case, the sprains, right? By the next day, I was driving with my boot and living my daily life with something resembling the moon boot I’d always wanted but never had.
Part of that life means grocery shopping on occasion, something I actually usually enjoy. Shopping at the nearby chain market with the friendly staff wearing assorted Hawaiian print shirts in a boot with a sore, swollen foot, though, that brought with it new experiences. On the positive side, I know where everything on my short list is located. On the negative side, it’s the space itself and the people in it.
As I was hobbling around with my cart, I felt surrounded by children, seemingly feral, marauding and auditioning for the Ministry of Silly Walks (™ Monty Python) with their own mini-grocery carts as props. There were also their parents, rushing behind and about to clip me or leaving their carts in the middle of the aisle as they wandered about because why not? If I could successfully accomplish grocery shopping without injury, I was not out of the woods yet. No, no, no. There is the infamous parking lot always associated with this particular chain for some reason, full of distracted or aggressive people and drivers who insist on backing into spots in a crowded lot so they can get the approval they never got from their dad or something, which should be its own dedicated ring of Dante’s Inferno.
In any case, it was my first time navigating this shopping experience while being personally impaired, but as soon as I stepped in, the memories of a different time came flooding back in. The children, they were wilding. The parents, they were seemingly on their own personal missions, irrespective of their descendents. The workers, they were pushing out big sampling stations. And I remembered a different time, 20 years or so ago, when I would take my mother, who was disabled and unsteady on her feet, grocery shopping and I would have to keep a constant vigilance about reckless cart steerers and drivers from any direction. My mother was under our care at the time, and sometimes, I just shopped for her. Other times, though, she liked to shop herself and feel normal again. Can you blame her? She was in the process of losing almost everything. I was taking care of her at the store; wasn’t it the responsibility of other shoppers to take care of themselves, their children and their cars to ensure they didn’t injure someone?
In any case, the memories flooded back in as I stood there in my boot, trying to get from Point A to Point B without getting plowed by a random cart. If I fell again, would I break my foot? My wrist? This time, I was on hyper-alert for myself. I felt myself moving toward what I needed and freezing in place when other bodies moved erratically and carelessly. As I was starting to walk out the door, someone walking faster behind me than I could in my new boot got too close so I moved aside, letting her pass. “Sorry, you’re first,” she said, expecting me to walk back in front of her. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m slow right now.” She passed quickly, an apologetic look on her face.
I knew how my mother felt in that moment. She felt like a burden.
Of all the things I write about, perhaps this seems silly and whiny, the hardships of grocery shopping in a boot. Really, though, it’s about much more: to notice one another and be considerate, and perhaps – and with this, Ayn Rand is blowing angry bubbles over in a cryogenic tank somewhere – make accommodations. I know in our world of libertarian hot garbage, “Why should I [insert minor adjustment] to accommodate your need?” is a real thought process. It particularly flared up during the pandemic (“Why should I wear a mask if you’re the one with a medical issue?”) but the United States has been fed a steady diet of rugged individualism lore, dovetailing with our aggrieved fantasies about any consideration being a hardship heaped upon the noble cowboy or honorary cowboy.
The thing is, though, I’m not asking for your house. I’m not asking for your money. I am not asking for any kind of privation. I am simply asking that people notice that they are part of a whole, not autonomous, free-ranging agents, and to remember that we have to navigate this space together. Sometimes that means me moving over to the side when I’ve got a sprained ankle so I don’t inconvenience you. Sometimes that means you are 30 seconds later to your car than you’d have liked because I was in your way. Some of us are able-bodied. Some of us are not, whether it’s permanent or temporary. We have to care about one another because not caring? Well, it’s gotten us here.
People with mobility issues already have to navigate a world not designed with them in mind. Compounding that with impatience and lack of consideration makes something that’s already challenging that much more difficult. In the big picture, a sprain is not the end of the day, but the way we treat one another is key to removing our disconnection and becoming embodied again in a world not of AI bots but vulnerable and powerful flesh-and-blood human beings.
Remembering that is part of how we re-human.
Perfect for handicapped awareness month!