Wheelchair, Get Out Of My Way!*

Sunday, I got to go and see Billy Cosby at the Apollo. It was pretty great. I had always wanted to go there and to see ‘Cos’ there was tremendous.

But also, there was a moment of complete awkwardness that was just as amazing. There was a woman who was confined to a wheelchair that kept being moved up and down the aisle to find the best spot for her. Porter talks about this in his blog but what he didn’t detail which I found fascinating was that this woman was seated in a regular seat at the end of an aisle finally.

And sitting next to her were people she didn’t know. And at the end of the show, the people next to her wanted to get by. And so the woman actually said something like, “I’m sorry, I can’t move my legs or else I’d get up.” And the woman trying to get by was like, “oh, that’s ok”. And she stood there.

And after awhile said, “said is there somebody we should contact to get you in your wheelchair? Somebody we could wave at?” And the other woman said, “oh no, we normally wait until everybody leaves before he puts me in the wheelchair again.”

And you could see the woman who wanted to leave trying to think of any sort of response that would still be borderline polite but still allow her to leave before everyone had left.

She could not think of a response. I was glad. If she had said something else, I think I would have yelled at her.

* This title is inspired by Montel Williams who once came to my high school doing an inspirational speaking gig and the big tag line was, “Mountain, get out of my way!” It was lame. We all made fun of him.