Privilege

Dragon Mood? -- humbled and thankful

Driving down a main thoroughfare in the little village of our pied-a-terre, I saw something that made me want to stare. Even though I know it's not polite.

There was a man in a wheelchair, wheeling himself down the sidewalk. Something looked "funny" about the man and his wheelchair. The wheelchair had no backrest. It was more like a little fabric seat suspended between two wheels. The man had no legs. No legs that I could see although he did have pants on and a shirt that he kept pulling down over his backside.

The other thing was that he wasn't sitting up in the wheelchair, but rather was lying face down, craning his neck up to see where he was going. It looked awkward and hard to push his wheelchair with his hands, with his shoulders lifted and his arms pushing behind and away from his body.

What really drew my attention to him was the traffic jam he apparently was causing. I noticed a city bus ahead of me, creeping slowly, with three or four cars behind the bus. I wondered if there had been an accident? I pulled over into the passing lane, and as I passed the bus, I saw the man in the wheelchair on the sidewalk, making his painfully slow and tedious progress up the street.

Exactly what prompted the city bus to slow down alongside this man, I don't know. But I do know that this "differently abled" man had a lot of eyes on him.

Thank you, God, for my legs. And for the ability to stand up. And for the privilege of walking.

Wow!