Respect

This week has been a lesson of respect, or lack of, from those around me or that I do business with. A few days ago, I was woken up by my main night nurse talking to the oncoming day assistant. It's rare I get a full night's sleep, but if I do sleep, it's usually best in the morning. Therefore, I have a written rule that morning shift change conversations be done in another room, but within ear shot of me. This night nurse has read and signed to abide by this, and other, house rules.

I therefore reminded her of this rule so that they could continue talking elsewhere and hopefully not have it happen again. The nurse responded in a very annoyed tone of voice, but stopped talking at least. This assistant is old enough to be my mother, but in the years she has been working for me, she has always shown little to no respect of those younger than her. After a number of other problems, I'm afraid she won't be lasting much longer as one of my assistants.

Several months ago, one of my longer term web clients purchased another business, web site and all. A few weeks ago, they approached me about some needs they have on the other company's site and wanted an estimate on the work. I was scheduled to meet with the parent company's, my client, representative today, but she canceled at the last minute yesterday and rescheduled. Through a series of emails with the representative, she said they were considering a few web development agencies for the work. Along with this information, she made it sound like they had never planned to have me do the work and were surprised I had more clients than them. After several hours of prep work and lining up a meeting room, this was an unexpected and annoying find.

The more I interact with the outside world, I see more and more how little respect someone like me receives. No, I can't control anything below my head, stand to look at a person face to face, or shake their hand. Those are parts of it, but the general population has the notion that if you're in a wheelchair, your mind doesn't work and you aren't worth spending time on. I had thought that at least with long-time clients this would not be the case, but unfortunately, I was wrong.

Tomorrow will be my third school I have gone to this year. Kids are much easier to work with than adults, at least second through fourth graders. They haven't built up the automatic response to disabilities that adults have and they are genuinely curious about how I go about everyday life. The last school I was at, this past Tuesday, one student guessed my occupation exactly. In the eight years I've been talking at schools, that was the first time it happened.

I often wonder if these children will remember any of my teaching when they are adults. Many adults could use some instruction as well, but they are not anywhere nearly as accepting to, in their minds, strange instruction. Hopefully as my classes reach college and beyond some norms will change, but they unfortunately have a long way to go.