Mindless in the Media (Malcolm in the Middle)

Tick. I'm in third grade.  The girl who sat a few rows down from me uses a walker; she has osteogenesis imprefecta "brittle bone disease."  We became friends, but every time I talked to her, she struck me as beyond her years— maybe this was because she was more serious than anyone else in my class, or because I'd never seen anyone under 70 use a walker before.  Most of all, she looked...tired.  Amidst all the kids swinging, running, and jumping, we would sit together on the playground's only bench and look on.  After I moved away, we promised to keep in touch.  I never did get around to that.

Tick. I'm in 11 years old.  My best friend had broken her foot.  Every day, a swarm of girls would beg her to choose one of them to be her "helper" for the day.  Between getting out of class early and being allowed to try out how "fun" running on crutches is, it was the dream job.  We all knew that the injury was temporary and that in no time, the crutches will be gone and forgotten.  We never thought about what would happen had the injury been permanent.

Tick. It's 7:17 on an unremarkable Tuesday morning.  Swarms of students flooded through the front doors, pressing the handicap assist button to avoid opening the doors themselves.  I walked through easily, my stride unbroken without the inconvenience of a door. I passed by special education classrooms and the school elevator as I rushed to get to first hour on time, unaware of how a slight annoyance to me can be an impossible burden on others.

Tick.  It's a half-day after exams and I'm in the Smashburger parking lot.  I started to wave as I saw two girls from Troy High try to find a parking spot, but I drop my hand as I spotted them, unwilling to wait for a spot or drive to the back, pull into a handicapped-reserved space. That was the first time I ever thought about what those saved 10 feet meant to a disabled person.

there are so few tv scenes dealing with disabilities
that I had to make my own gif

I had let the ubiquitous nature of disability fade into the background like white noise for so long that the realization that "without warning, at any time," the reality of disability could become my reality shocked me (Mairs 15).  In each of these experiences, my time as a "Temporarily Abled Person" was ticking away; I was growing closer and closer to becoming disabled myself (15).  The biggest problem surrounding disabilities' portrayal in the media is that there is almost none (and when there is, the disabled are seen as weak and unimportant, so they never end up sticking in our minds anyways).

We see the accommodations made for the disabled every time we walk into a public restroom, park our cars, or use automatic doors... but we ignore them.  In a world where efficiency is valued in communication (if it's not under 140 words, is it even worth reading?) and clickbait is the ultimate media tool, we know more about what Kylie Jenner wore last weekend than the 6.5 million people who require a wheelchair/cane/walker on a daily basis.  Maybe it's because we see humankind as invincible and the vulnerability of the disabled makes us uncomfortable.  Maybe we are too busy with our own lives to worry about others.  Whatever the cause, we've become disabled in our efforts to avoid disability; we've blinded ourselves from the harsh truth that runs our world.