Disabling honesty

I was waiting (as bloody usual) for the bus two days ago when I met a guy at the bus stop. We got to talking, the way strangers who have all the time in the world tend to do, beginning, as always, with that incomprehensible "Howre you going?" (I have learned that the appropriate response is not "By bus lah!", or the startled reflex "Thank you!" but to say, "Good, thanks, and how're you going?").

His name was Bruce, and he was in a wheelchair.

I had noticed him briefly when I had boarded the bus we both later got off, casting a quick glance at him, then moving to the rear and thinking nothing more of it.

I hate to admit it, but like a lot of able-bodied persons, I have never been entirely comfortable around the disabled. Simply because I don’t know what's appropriate. In my head, the disabled still represent a sector of society which is, in its own way, a different tribe, with its own customs and conventions, to which I'm a stranger to and which I have no wish to unwittingly contravene. This does not sound enlightened, and it's not. But I think more than a few people reading this will know what I'm talking about.

When I'm out and someone who’s obviously disabled crosses my path, I try not to make too much eye contact, because I don't want to be thought that I'm staring rudely, as many Singaporeans are still wont to do. Yet at the same time, I don't want to look like I'm ignoring them like some sort of oblivious boor, smug in my physical wholeness. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I opt for the lesser evil and opt to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary and make as much eye contact as I would anyone else, i.e. none. I fear that when I actually talk to someone who is disabled, I am awkward and overly nice, like I feel like I have something to make up for. The fact that I can walk, perhaps. I think that if I were in a wheelchair, I would come to resent that very quickly, the notion that people are being nicer out of pity or guilt. Yet, I catch myself doing it anyway, and I hate it. Is it just me?

The handicapped are infrequently seen in Singapore. It's not something I realized until I came here, where there is the space and the thoughtfulness to ensure that most places are wheelchair-accessible. The buses are equipped with suspensions which can be customized so that the bus sinks to the level of the curb, enabling a wheelchair and prams to roll from pavement to the interior without the difficulty of variable height differences in surface. The front of the buses have wide spaces without seats to accommodate prams and wheelchairs. The sidewalks are wide, and there is always a ramp to a building. As a consequence, I see a lot more disabled people who are wheelchair bound out and about than I do back home. In addition, there are a heck of a lot more of those funky motorized wheelchairs here. I don't know if it’s because they are cheaper here, whether through government subsidy or personal income, or they are just more available.

It struck me quite forcibly what a horribly disabled-unfriendly place we are.

All of this crossed my mind as I talked to Bruce. There was an awkward moment, where he introduced himself, but did not come forward and offer his hand, as one normally does. And when I introduced myself I hesitated in stepping forward to bridge the distance and shake his hand, and lost the moment. There was a small, brief silence which was soon smoothed over. I chatted happily with Bruce about, amongst other things, the unpredictable weather, the crappy-ass bus system, my reason for invading his country and what burnouts were. Bruce, it turns out, is quite the master of winnowing out information without actually surrendering much. I don't know much about him at all, save that he lives close to where I live. I was enjoying the conversation, finding myself uncharacteristically chatty, when the bus finally came.

As it turned out, the bus which was supposed to come had gotten a flat, and the bus that came in its place was not wheelchair-accessible, being of an older model and with high deep steps leading to the kern. The driver apologized and offered to call Bruce a maxicab, but he declined, saying he would make it home himself, and that he would be there in about ten minutes. While this exchange was going on, the other people waiting to take the bus watched, as did I.

In the end, he said he'd make his own way back, and said goodbye to me. I said I would see him around, and boarded the bus, feeling oddly guilty that I could while he couldn't. I watched him ride away and perhaps it was fancy, but it looked awfully lonely, that wheelchair moving across the pavement with nothing but sky and road as a backdrop.

It doesn't make sense, I know, but I felt embarrassed to have seen the driver tell Bruce that he couldn't get on the bus, even though Bruce himself probably wasn't fazed. It made me sad to think that if he hadn't lived where he did, he might have had to wait another hour for the next bus, and hope he could get on that one. And I hated the idea that I could hop on the bus without a second thought and yet he couldn't. I wanted to say, "Will you be all right?" but didn't because it might have come out patronizing. I wanted to offer to walk back with him, but his wheelchair whizzes along a lot faster than I can walk, and anyway it seems too much a presumption of familiarity. So I sat in the bus and watched him make his way home alone.

I was relating this to Punky later, and as we talked about it, he said, "I think I'd rather go blind than have to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life." I felt mopey and sad for the rest of the evening, god knows why.

It's unimaginable, sometimes, how much we take for granted.