I sent in my first draft to the ROM today. Although readers will know much of what I wrote I feel that the recipients ought to read it before I share it broadly. So tonight I will share something I wrote in November 2004 for l’Agora magazine.
Seeing Differently
Once I was crossing some streets in the town of Stratford, Ontario, returning to my van after some window shopping. I nearly ran over my friend who was crossing with me. His next question made me realize that he probably thought I either can’t see very well, or am a crazed driver. He asked why I crossed that street, and others, using a veering pathway, rather like tacking a sailboat upstream.
I explained that I do this so I can see cars coming. It is difficult for me to turn my head very much and I rely on my excellent peripheral vision to see around me. Wheelchairs don’t move sideways and, (in a motion that is very typical for “walkees”), they don’t move in one direction while twisting around to look in another. Consequently, to be sure that I am not about to be run down, I veer from side to side, in a zig-zag motion, when I am jay-walking!
I went on to explain that the world is almost always constructed as if everyone stood and walked. I have been on the second floor of a building with no elevator so few times in my life that I can’t imagine what a walk-up dentist’s office or an upstairs bedroom may look like. This might seem inconsequential to most readers, but it can have profound effects on the life of a person who uses a wheelchair.
In the mid-80’s, a young man named Justin Clarke sought permission in the Ontario courts to move out of a large institution where his parents placed him when he was a child. Friends had invited him to move with them into a cooperative housing development in Ottawa. His parents claimed that he was incompetent to make such a decision.
Mr. Clarke was thought to be unable to “benefit” from an education, so he was only offered the opportunity to learn to read and write when he was already a teenager. At that time it was discovered that he could use a spelling board very creatively.
Even more than I, Mr. Clarke knew very little about the second floors of our world. In fact he knew almost nothing about houses at all, having spent the majority of his life living in a large building that is a half a kilometer long.
The court wanted Mr. Clarke to explain how he intended to live and on describing the kind of house he thought he could live in. If you had lived Mr. Clarke’s life experience how would you have answered these questions?
Fortunately Justin Clarke had a judge who could understand that different people see different things. The judge set him free.
Sometimes it turns out that I have the advantage. In 1990 I made my first trip to the UK and some friends and I went to the great stone circle at Stonehenge. This sacred place has been roped off since 1975 and tourists can only see it from a distance. As I sat at the rope a security guard approached my friend and said: “Would the lady like to see it closer up?”
The lady (me!) said: “I certainly would!!!”
We wheeled right into the centre of the stones and I sat looking east through the space between two pillars. The security guard bent down to look and said: “The people who built this place were on average only 4 ft. 3 in. tall and you have to stoop to see why they designed the line of sight in this way.”
Sitting as I do in my wheelchair - as I was doing at that moment - I am 4 ft. 3 in. tall.
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