6A
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
It was unusual for anyone to knock on my door, but particularly on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t expecting anybody and so when my roommate and I opened the door, we were even further surprised when a man we had never laid eyes on became visible.
“Excuse me, the ramp outside, is it yours?” he asked in a thick accent, which I immediately recognized from my years in Chicago as being Polish. I looked at the communal door that all of our flats shared, and there was a ramp my friend had built me by hand about a month before. The step to get into the apartment building proved to be too big for my wheelchair, so I asked one of my guy friends to build me a ramp that my roommate and I could carry in and out of our building as needed. He had worked hours on it, making it light enough to be moved by one person, yet sturdy enough to look well made and stable enough so that anyone could walk up and down on it.
“Well I’m from apartment 6A and you can’t use this ramp in our building.” Essentially what he was saying was that I couldn’t use the way I get into my building. I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, but he offered no explanation as to why this would occur.
“May I ask for an explanation, Mr. 6A?” my roommate demanded.
“Yes, it looks terrible. It’s not professional and we don’t need it. There are many rules to this block of flats here. We don’t let people hang laundry outside. That was to dissuade the immigrants from moving here. We don’t allow loud parties, so the homosexuals couldn’t move in. And we each are allotted only a certain number of plants to have on our porch so that the Chinese won’t want to live here either.”
I looked at him dumbfounded. Within the past 15 seconds he had managed to discriminate against approximately ¾ of the world. It was remarkable with what speed and efficiency he was able to do it. I immediately wanted to remark that people in America used to feel that way about Polish people, but I held my tongue. When he left, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.
I had run into discriminating people before. The world is full of them. I had run into people who were idiotic about accessibility, insisting on their architecture instead of what I needed to get by. Even my own high school was full of these individuals. What disturbed me most, however, was the fact that 6A came into my own home and started making demands on how I should live my life, how I got into my building, and of course, how I could and couldn’t adapt the problems in my life. I would agree that if I had built a permanent structure without the permission of other residents in the building, I would be in the wrong. But, this was not the case. The ramp was to be brought out and removed every time I came in and out of the building. My roommate brought it out, I rolled down it, and she removed it, back into the apartment. It would hardly be out for longer than 5 minutes, and yet this was enough to disturb 6A and have him come into my home insisting that I meet the demands of a man I had never seen before.
I didn’t live in that flat long- about a year, and that was sufficient. I found out later from another resident that this man was a member of the board of directors for the block of flats, and she would terrorize her because she was in a wheelchair also. After this, I didn’t care how great the location was, or how low the rent was. I was very glad I left and walked away from such bigoted idiocy, for lack of a better term.
I have thought of 6A a lot in the past few years, and wondered what he is up to. My friend assures me that he hasn’t changed a bit. I understand his pride in his home. It’s a beautiful location. But, given that he lives on the third story without an elevator, I can’t help but think that he is getting on in years, and how many more years will he be able to climb those two staircases as easily as he does now? I can’t help but wonder how he can feel so strongly about immigrants given his thick accent and the discrimination he himself faces as a result of that. Or, maybe I just envision him struggling more than he actually does. The human condition is changeable, that’s why we can always relate to one another, and the position of an individual in one decade may change drastically in the next, given politics, physical ability, or simply location and demographics of the surrounding area. The time will come when, for one reason or another, he too will have to pick up and move, as we all do. I just hope that before that, no one makes demands on him in his own home.