Thursday, August 03, 2006

Frequently bizarre happenings

Agent Fang at Fangworld explains her latest weird experience while traveling and asks the question:

I sometimes wonder if I'm unlucky when it comes to working away accomodation, or if these frequently bizarre happenings are something every disabled person experiences?
Generally, I do believe disabled people experience frequently bizarre happenings for a variety of reasons. As disabled dude Neil Marcus once noted, "disability is not a 'brave struggle' or 'courage in the face of adversity'... disability is an art. It's an ingenious way to live." Any situation requiring an original, creative approach is probably likely to end up being bizarre more often than a situation that doesn't require ingenuity. I can fairly say that as a person who uses a wheelchair I have had hundreds of experiences both social and physical that the nondisabled people I know have never experienced personally.

Example: I've been carried into a building and up three flights of stairs by a firefighter. There'd been a kitchen fire in someone else's apartment and the elevator couldn't be turned on again until the building inspector came the next day.

I have more, of course. The most recent are from my extended hospital stay, probably because many things happening in a hospital are bizarre to most people. But more on those another day.

Am I right? Agent Fang isn't unlucky, she's disabled and therefore lives in the world of weird. Disabled or not, do you have frequent bizarre happenings and what do you think is their cause?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would agree with That Girl in the fact that "normal" people are not that observant to the irony and that what a disabled person experiences is a diffrent set of normalacy because of what has been presented in life. if i am wrong please enlighten me i want and need to learn, -jen

Amanda said...

Living in a overseas in a culture that i don't really understand very well has led to a lot of bizarre situations. I can't get through a day without finding at least one thing that happens to me a little weird

Kay Olson said...

Good point, Amanda. It's difference and expectation too that create what we experience as weird.