A different perspective!

I was dancing away Saturday night, just asked a really nice guy to dance when suddenly i felt a ping followed by a cramping pain in the back of my leg. We spent a couple of hours down at casualty on Sunday morning, to discover I have damaged a tendon! No dancing for a month! No driving for a couple of weeks! So I am consigned to the shed for a couple of weeks!

Lucy very kindly turned up around lunchtime today, and offered to take me into Southampton as they have a great wheelchair lending service. They couldn't have been nicer, a lovely chap helped me to learn how to control an electric wheelchair, and then I was set free to roam the shops.

I have often seen people getting around in these, often secretly thinking they look a lot of fun, and I was right they are! We had quite a laugh when I did not get out of the lift quick enough and ended up going up and down for a while! Maneuvering it was quite challenging at times, as the shelves in shops can be quite tight!

What did surprise me was the attitude of other shoppers! One girl who was walking towards me texting nearly tripped over me as she spotted me in front of her at the last minute, but rather than apologise, she swore at me! Another group of girls decided to stop right in front of me and I was able to perform an emergency stop, but they would not move! Another woman stood blocking a whole aisle was really annoyed when we asked her, very nicely, if she wouldn't mind moving so we could get past! As for the shop assistant in the fabric shop, she actually sighed and rolled her eyes when I asked if I could use the lift for the second floor!

Fortunately, it did not stop our enjoyment, we spent most of the afternoon laughing at my attempts to steer straight, navigate lifts and aisles! By the end of the afternoon I had become quite talented!

I hope this experience has made me more aware of disabled people, and I am more willing to help them. Just as soon as I stop being one myself!