Never Walked In High Heels

I have learned in recent years that there are many hazards of not having a diamond ring. However, this was one that I never expected.

I was in a coffee shop the other day when a young man asked if he could sit next to me. Instantly suspicious, I stupidly nodded even though my past judgment has told me that individuals who wish to sit next to me usually want to talk to me, and such individuals who want to talk to me usually prevent me at the very least from getting my work done. However, this particular man illustrated that not only would he hold me back from work, but I would proceed to a conversation which even my best etiquette teachers would be at an absolute loss to navigate. The young man proceeded to tell me his name and states that he has been abducted to the planet Zorbon, and what I am actually seeing is his hologram android.

At first I think, he must be joking in order to seem more bizarre than he actually is, and then he proceeds to tell me that he is serious, using his laptop to pull up star charts, databases, and other information regarding the great planet of Zorbon which, forgive me if I’m mistaken, seems as if no one on earth has ever heard of.

This of course is not the first time I have found myself in a conversation which made me question whether or not I had slipped into an alternate universe. I seem to attract weirdos from every tribe, nation, and planet. This is a gene I am convinced that I have inherited from my father. My father has the remarkable ability to attract cult leaders, religious fanatics and shall we say, oddities of all sorts. Evidently during their early dating lives, these convergent flocks would hound my mother and father; making it impossible for them to go on a simple date. So I seem to have inherited this gene and although it seems to be recessive in most people, I have a pheromone that somehow attracts very bizarre people.

On the whole, I think that I am pretty tolerant of different individuals’ world views. My own views are fierce in their own right, which may be as strange to some as hailing from Zorbon. Among my friends, there are many Jews, Catholics, Hindu’s, Muslims, basically an entire diversified population which would make the BBC diversity department howl with envy. However, there is only so much a woman can take and being introduced to a hologram android is pushing the limits. The only appropriate response I could garner was, “Buddy, you’re bloody insane.”

I’m not exactly sure what he was trying to accomplish. Maybe being from the planet Zorbon is supposed to be particularly sexy. Perhaps in the style of, I’ll let you see my hologram if you let me see yours. But in my book, this is not a particularly pleasant way to start a romance let alone a conversation.

I have often been told in my life to be kind and tolerant to everyone and to love them exactly as they are, giving every guy a chance before I reject him as a potential suitor. These days, coffee shops are the place to meet your soulmate; and so I do my best to smile and look inviting, even when I’m only there to get a little work done. I don’t know if these rules of dating extend to people who have been abducted and replaced by androids, but after about fifteen minutes of supposed conversation, I found it best to take my work and make an exit.

He is at it again. After four beers in the course of ninety minutes, my friend is drunk. Or at least teetering on the edge of drunk and doing a fine job remaining stable while standing. But what is more stereotypical of the entire situation is not only is he drunk, he is in the middle of an argument and everybody is looking at me to put in my two cents regarding his unbearably loud opinion. I do the one thing I have been trained to do in this situation after coming across it several times. I grab my iPhone and begin to check my email as a distraction.

His argument is, regardless of the fact that he is highly intoxicated on beer and cider, nonetheless poorly thought out and I want absolutely none of it. Everyone at this point is looking at me beginning to ask questions which are directed at getting me to let go of my phone and participate, and I’m simply (adamantly you might say) uninterested. I know of the flaws in his argument. I’ve heard him argue the same point (even every once in a while while sober!) a million times before and it’s simply not interesting. It would be like a low speed chase. He says something which directly contradicts the sentence he said before and in this particular form of reediting, with the assistance of people also drinking alcohol and refusing to listen closely, they all buy it and his rant is able to continue. I’m beginning to wonder if it will eventually become indefinite.

The thing about being in a wheelchair most of the time is that there is absolutely no room for you to have a bad argument. People still automatically assume that I am mentally disabled or incapable of creating any form of reasonable logic. Even while drunk, my friend ranting in a pub gets automatically more respect assigned to him simply because of the fact that he is an able bodied man and able to stand up at the bar (barely) than I am as a woman in high heels sitting down in an electric wheelchair. At best, if I was using the level of pressure which he was using, I would receive people’s pity and at worst I would be ignored or mowed over by some other drunk guy who desperately needs an ego boost.

At this point in time with my friend gathering quite the crowd around him I have checked my email, texted my father, checked my stock, and played a game of Sudoku. Then he said something which for a sober woman, regardless of any sort of brain injury is just too good to pass up in terms of sheer absurdity. I turned my phone off and slipped it into my bag.

At this, everyone turned around and looked at me, “You finally decided to join the conversation?” The old man who always sits in the corner of the pub smiles at me, as he knows what’s coming. He’s been here long enough and seen enough political debates inside the walls of this ancient public house to know that I’m about to make my move and no one is quite ready for what I’m about to say except for him, and me.

By the time I finish my argument; which takes approximately thirty seconds, it is silent. Someone offers to buy me a cider and I quickly make a joke in order to change the tone. The argument is thankfully over and things can get back to at least being pleasantly entertaining even if they will never be profoundly educational. I am ready to have a drink. I am with friends and they all know me in a way that allows me around them to let myself go and fully be the full, silly self without being judged. My friends in this pub will never see me as incapable.

I’ve seen the commercials. The male announcer almost teases you with the idea that all your problems will be solved if you only buy the correct application for under a dollar. And from the stance of creative businesswoman, the App Store for the iphone is enthralling. With no overhead, a constantly changing storefront and boundless creativity, this is, without a doubt, the correct formula for the next stage of entrepreneurship for the new frontier.

If only that ‘boundless creativity’ would come in the form of faster evolution.

After all, what exactly is the use of a program which is an alarm clock on a device where one is automatically build in. Better yet, how about coming to and end of a fine dinner and being unable to calculate the tip without the help of your trusty technological companion. Or there’s always the program, that tells you about what other programs have come out and which other programs you need. (This one, much to my surprise, was not created by Apple.)

I bought an iphone in hopes to make my life as a disabled woman easier. With life in this position one is dependent on barons of industry, invention, and software to make life not simply more convenient but also simply livable. To say that my iphone has changed my life would be an understatement. But I was also one of the first people investing in voice activation all the way back in 1994, and have since thrown money at nearly every piece of assistive technology conceivable. In the case of adaptive tech hardware and software, it really doesn’t matter what sort of resources you have, if can’t be sold to the mainstream population the software will not advance.

This is how we get over 200 software developers which create alarm clocks, and no program that will actually call a London black cab. After all, my friends argue, its easy to hail a cab off the street. But figuring out what fifteen percent of your dinner bill is… that’s a real challenge.

The App Store illustrates to me that the leaders of industry are few and far between while those who have the programming skills but lack the imagination are well in abundance. It’s proof that just because there are lots of hands which can make the industry move forward, without the brains there is little guarantee of it doing so. Looking at what sells today will only show you what you should’ve been selling yesterday. And so to hop on the ‘alarm clock bandwagon’ only serves to tell you where the industry is. As with any other form of progress the market has to look to the needs of people who are not in the mainstream to figure out what comes next.

I’m one of the most non maternal women I know. Its not that I don’t like children, its just that I don’t really know what to do with them. Some many of my friends talk about how they were “born to be a mom” or are willing to manipulate their careers so that they can have children and, truth be told, I’ve never been like that. If you were to ask me to phrase my expectation of having children into a economic philosophy, it, like so many of my views, could best be described as laze fare.. If kids happen… they happen and I’ll rebuild my support system accordingly.

The problem is that as an only child, I didn’t grow up surrounded by little ones. A therapist once told my mother to never speak in baby talk around me in order to force my vocabulary to expand. While it worked to some extent, an above average vocabulary had another effect. Other children steered clear of those people who used particularly big words. So between not having siblings and not having an entourage of friends, I grew up surrounded by the language of adults.

I’ve not yet hit thirty and today I decided I do not like the language of adults. When I was young I used to long to understand every word of the grown-up world, the simple statements of my peers seeming flat and almost primitive. They just said exactly what was on their mind, without regard to cadence, alteration, or even tact for that matter. The adult way of speaking seemed so complex and exact. I couldn’t wait to hear that language my entire time.

And then I grew up myself.

Everyday, now that I’m in the grown up world, I see that it is this world that has the barbaric language which lacks imagination and beauty. Scoring high on the vocabulary sections of my entrance exams for universities, the are some leaflets I receive in my mail box which I stare at blankly trying to figure out what on earth the advertisers are trying to say in them. Or the words are unnecessarily large that just the sounds of them slice through anyone who doesn’t have a shell instead of supple skin.

“Patient’s gait is uneven and massively unstable with unpredictable movements and often staccato breathing when fatigued.” I live with the condition and I am not even sure what such an analysis actually means.

Last month I found myself visiting an old friend and her two young boys. They were squirrely and much past cleaning up after them, I had no idea what to do with them. Despite my friend’s aggravation at this fact, I didn’t particularly feel the need to learn what to do with young children. Just let the boys do want they want, and cleaning up after to make my friends life a little easier. I was clearing the table when the youngest boy climbed up on his mother’s lap and whispered in her ear. Intrigued, I looked at my friend.

“He says you walk like a dancer.”

“It is a tale told by an idiot,

Signifying nothing.”

It is a very curious phenomenon which can make a person actually question his own sanity, but ever since I entered college, I sometimes wonder if I’m losing my mind. It doesn’t happen when I’m alone, just when I’m listening to my superiors. This strange occurrence is taking hold of every sector of our lives and seem to be spreading like a virus. Soon we will be having national competitions in the amazing ability to talk for hours and say nothing. 

I recognize that due to my disability, some communication problems are evident. Despite being an award winning speaker, comedian, and a RADA trained actress, there is still the occasional idiot I run into who insists on talking to my friend rather than me. I still politely remind waitresses that they weren’t listening when they got an order wrong. And on the occasions that I bump into people who say they can’t understand me, I just bring up that it must be really annoying to only understand one language. They always understand that part. But this is not what I’m referring to.

I have heard people, at terrifyingly high levels, go into a full monologue which I can’t even begin to pull a thesis out of. This extract is from a email I received from a professor concerning a room hire:

“If you think this not large enough there is a rehaersal space ( Space 1) which could hold  70. This is free in April but having given me dates they now want to confirm on Monday what is actually available.” 

What?

OK, Beyond the basic grammatical errors, does this make any sense? A room is free in April but they need to confirm if it’s actually available. Is it free or not? If it is free, why are we waiting for confirmation? If we don’t know, why are you making it sound as if we’ve discovered something? Why can’t you just be clear and give me some information? 

It is like when you ask a friend if she liked a movie, and she says, “Well, I liked it, but I didn’t.” That actually doesn’t tell you anything because in truth she doesn’t know if she liked the movie in herself. She won’t give you a clear answer because she can’t. But to hide the fact that she doesn’t know the answer she veils herself in double talk which is, of course, impossible to decipher. Now she doesn’t look foolish, you just feel stupid. 

What makes matters more disturbing is this language schism seems to go both ways. The second I ask a direct question, a teacher stares at me blankly, and I’m wondering if I’ve slipped into Greek without meaning to. Hello? Can you hear me? Is this thing on?

“So can we rent a room or not?”

And there’s about five seconds of silence before an incomprehensible attempt at an answer.

“Well… er… as I just said…”

Really, if you don’t know the answer, just say so rather than wasting time.  When did we get to a point where we have lost nearly all capacity to communicate? So quickly we want to forget that words mean something that it feels like we have no desire to be held accountable to what we say. If it sounds like I know what I’m saying, I don’t actually have to think about it. 

When I was very little, I would listen to adults talk, sometimes getting lost in the conversation that would sashay above my head. I wondered when I’d be old enough to follow what was being said. Now I look at the students I teach and see them wondering the same thing. Sometimes I can’t help but lean over them, probably stepping way out of my bounds as a teacher, and whisper:

“Sometimes, if you can’t understand what an adult is talking about, its because the adult doesn’t know either.”