He waved his pudgy little hand at me and squealed in delight from the confines of the child seat in the front of the shopping basket. While his mother was preoccupied with selecting between cold medications, he carried on an enchanted "conversation" with me through waving and cooing and his brilliant brown eyes. In his eyes, I was a marvelous wonder of a "big person" conveniently seated at his eye level for the exact purpose of engaging in tales of the world as he experiences it. When his mother finally threw her selected medication into the cart and made her way out of the aisle, she never even noticed me even though her son continued to call and wave and bounce in his seat until they rounded the end of the aisle.
She peered at me with the appraisal of a child who is processing something new and trying to figure out how to make it fit into her knowledge of the world. As we waited for the elevator, she alternated between fidgeting with her toy cell phone and sneaking looks in my direction. To her five year old mind, I was a new encounter and she was fascinated but also trying so very hard to avoid being rude. I can only guess, but I would suspect that her past experiences with individuals who use wheelchairs has been limited to either medical environments (i.e. hospitals) or to much older individuals and at a very young looking 27 years old navigating the world independently I defied all known rules. I met her glance with a warm smile, and she shared her shy smile with me. I had to laugh as she repeatedly looked at me, in my wheelchair, and then a group of elderly individuals, some of whom were also in wheelchairs, as if playing the old Sesame Street game "one of these things is not like the other".
They stood before me blatantly staring at me, yet refusing to step to one side or the other of the aisle so that I could proceed. Their looks were not inquisitive in nature but degrading and repulsed. At about sixteen years of age, the four of them had the developmental skills to comprehend the fact that people have disabilities but apparently were lacking the social learning as to how to interact with people who were not just like them. My patience does not extend to ignorance, and so I offered them a simple choice: move or I will see just how many of them I can take out in one good roll down the aisle in wheelchair bowling. Apparently this made sense to them as they grumbled and shot dirty looks at me, but did rapidly discover that it is possible to walk without occupying the entire width of a store aisle. I do wonder if their little necks are sore from trying to stare at me behind them as they walked? :)
Three different ages, three different interactions, three different perspectives of me as a young adult who uses a wheelchair within the course of one day. Each one left me laughing, in a very different and unique way. Laughing at the innocence of a toddler, at the perplexed struggle to comprehend written on the face of a preschooler, and at the ignorant egocentric behavior of teenagers. Laughing at what it means to be human.