Never Walked In High Heels

Not long ago, I found myself in a pedestrian gridlock that was enough to make any urban dweller revolt. All of the sidewalks, streets, and secret allyways of London’s Trafalgar Square were blocked by formidable officers on horseback to absolutely ensure we were going nowhere. Used to such hoopla, I asked an officer what the occasion was. Turns out, on this perfect Sunday, Bush was going through London on his farewell tour. And so, despite opinions and beliefs, facts and rumors, I found myself doing the popular thing. I too was waiting in patient expectation to see George W. Bush’s limo pass the streets of London.

Truth be told, I can’t dismiss the Bush family as easily as most. There, I said it. You can stop reading whenever you want. But as I grew up in Chicago during the 1990’s, the first president Bush had a profound effect on my life. I remember sitting in front of the television, my six year old knees scraped as always, while Bush Sr. picked up his pen and signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was the first time in America that it was illegal to discriminate against me. As I went to school the teachers had to teach me. Doors opened, quite literally, so I could go to university, and now that I am an adult, I should be able to have the same dignities and respect as anyone else in society. It was this law that served as a model for other counties, such as Britain, to restore rights to their own people with disabilities. Asking me to hate the Bush family is like asking a newly freed slave to despise Abraham Lincoln. 

The limo passes in a flurry of camera phone flashes and finger-pointing. For being  such an unpopular president, Bush sure does seem to attract a lot of popularity from people who happen to be in the right place at the right time. I look at my phone and I can’t help but chuckle. It’s The President of the Untied States on my phone… and frankly it looks like any other car with tinted windows. I turn to leave. The barriers are now down and inconvenienced Londoners breathe a collective sigh of relief. 

“Finally. All I was trying to do is get to Charing Cross station,” a woman jokes to me. She says she’s going to visit her grandchildren for the week, and she’s hoping that tonight there’ll be time to bake bread with them. I smile at her, she smiles at me, and there is an instant connection. I say that I’m headed to the same place to catch the train home, hoping for an easy night.

“Oh, isn’t it sweet of them to let you take the train? It must be so nice to hold the rest of us up so you can get onboard.”

I swallow hard. For the rest of the conversation I stare dead ahead answering in one word syllables, resisting the urge to reach up and disable the woman myself to teach her a lesson in empathy. I keep telling myself to breathe and remember that she is older, so soon she’s going to fall, break a hip and learn her lesson. Or maybe she’ll go blind. Or…

I purposely lose her in the crowd. Doing so makes me feel a little more control of my life. I don’t know if I’m aggravated more at the woman or at myself for not saying anything. “Nice?” It’s the law. It’s my right to ride that train, and the fact that I can’t ride the train without giving at least 48 hours notice proves we have a long way to go before we can even talk about being “nice.” Every time the platform manager harasses me because he doesn’t want to get the ramp out, or when I have to ride an extra hour to the end of the line because no one was at my stop to help me get off, I’m reminded that freedom, while granted by law, takes awhile to trickle into actuality. 

It is easy for us to assume that because something changes legally, the problem is completely fixed.  In reality, getting a law in the books is only the first step to evolution. After that, the responsibility rests on the citizen’s shoulders. Oddly enough, it is at this point that society claims the problems as one that can be dismissed because it is remedied. We argue for legislation and for papers to be signed but after Congress is cleared and the legislators leave for home, the reformation of society still is entirely dependent on ordinary people. It is what we do on the subway, while buying jeans, the absent minded comments we make while passing each other on the street which define the rights of the individual more than any statesman would ever dream of.

At home I fix myself an obligatory cup of tea and watch the Thames from my balcony, Canary Warf looking like the land of Oz in the distance. The warmth of my home reminds me that while the outside world can turn hostile within a second, the places where I belong value me for the woman I am and for the things I have accomplished. To them, any slight allowances in time and adaptions are well worth it.