Picture this: you're sitting in your wheelchair in a rather fancy restaurant with a group of able bodied acquaintances. Several are visibly uncomfortable around your disability. As a person with quadriplegia (insert your disability here), you've seen this before .
The food is served. As you start to eat, you pick up your special eating utensil. Within a few bites, your arm spasms, tossing your food across the table. It lands into another person's glass of water.
What do you do?
1. Apologize and continue eating
2. Explain that you've had a spasm
3. Order another glass of water from the waitress
4. Joke (For example, that your aim is getting better)
5. Some combo of the above
Many of my friends with disabilities use humor to defuse situations. This can work well. I've been out in groups of people who all use wheelchairs, for example, in hotel lobbies. Customers in the hotel start complaining and can get a bit negative, grumbling "Where did all these wheelchairs come from?"
On a few occasions I have a friend who replies like clockwork "There was a bad pileup on the highway."
It can beat alternatives even though, granted, it doesn't suit everyone and it's not always the best reponse. There have been times when I've used humor and the other person has become angry - or may be clueless as to its meaning. Sometimes that doesn't matter to me, especially when I'm dealing with particularly negative behavior and I need to defuse a situation .
On one occasion during the Christmas season, I was in line at a local store with purchases when someone in the crowded line remarked to someone else "And it's crowded enough without people in wheelchairs in line. They shouldn't allow that th is time of year."
The other person mumbled an assent.
It took me a moment to realize they were talking about me. Ho, ho, ho. I felt eyes on the back of my head, then turned around and said "Who me? I work for Santa. And now you're getting coal."
Everyone laughed and it broke the awkward tension.
Even when humor doesn't work, I often find that I feel, for myself, that it can put things into perspective. It lightens my mood. It can keep my stress down.
And that's important too.
3 comments:
I forget where I heard it, but someone said that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
I know the feeling. Humor is my first reaction after years of dealing with things about by and for my wheelchair with others. Nice quote Sister!
I love that quote too.
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