Jerry Springer on a Bus: Redux

It never ceases to amaze me how prejudice intersects. Take, for example, ableism and racism: I was on the bus coming home from a party tonight and a young Latino man was stimming (or what could easily have been stimming) by lightly drumming his fingers on the back of the chair. So, this old white guy decides that he can't tolerate people who are different than him or acting strangely in any way on *his* city bus so he turns around and glares right at this young man, right in the eyes.

I mean he curled his lips down, furrowed his brow, leaned forward, and stared this poor young man right in the eyes. Here's what went down:

Latino Man: "Hey man, why are you looking at me like that?"

White Guy: "You know goddamn well why!"

Latino Man: *what?*

White Guy: "Oh?!?!"

Latino Man: *acts out drumming fingers* "But I just..."

White Guy: "Oh! So you're one of *those* brown people!"

I couldn't really overhear much else of what was going on, the bus was pretty loud and I was in the middle of a Tourettic fit, which makes it very hard to listen to much of anything and pushes lipreading out of the question...

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On the positive side of everything related to disability, when I was having the fit and thrashing about people tried to help me thinking I was having a seizure. It's kind of nice seeing a couple people on a crowded bus actually care enough about the people around them to actually offer assistance to someone who actually DOES look like she's having a seizure. Rather interesting how it happened, however:

*I bark and start uncontrollably trashing about*

People are surprised and start making comments "is that a dog?" "no, it's that woman!" "is she okay?" ect... and a fair amount of speculation about what might be "wrong" with me ensues. A couple of women are talking to themselves wondering if I'm okay for a minute or so.

Woman 1: "oh! Excuse me, miss, are you having a seizure? are you okay?"

Me: *looks back at them, smile, and shake my head*

Woman 1: "Oh, okay..."

Woman 2: "And here we were talking about her whether she was okay... I wonder what's wrong."

Kudos on the women for being good citizens and actually offering me a hand. I remember a psychology study on attractiveness where they made up a woman to look less attractive and pretend to have a seizure on a crowded bus; many, many times nobody lifted a finger to help her and sometimes people even stepped over her body to get off the bus.

But beyond that, I want to say kudos to the women on the bus for not pressing the issue once I said that I was okay and didn't need help. A lot of people, when they see a visibly disabled person having any kind of trouble, want to force their help on that person whether the person wants it or not.

Also, not peppering me with questions about my medical history was nice, too.

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Finally on the disability note: I was riding the bus home from a Deaf get-together. It was my first opportunity to really use sign in a real-world setting, outside of the classroom (my video phone is designed for hearing people and doesn't transmit clearly enough to sign to my signing out-of-state friends). I rather surprised myself in that my fluency, while not anywhere near perfect, was actually quite at a functioning level. I got by just fine, made a bunch of new friends, exchanged some numbers, and had a blast.

Cool Beans!