Today I spent some time with a friend who has a wheelchair access van.
it was her birthday and she wanted to spend it with me. I was honored
and she had to drive, her van was the only way she could get around. It
has a ramp that comes down from the side and special locks that allow
her to drive and not move from her wheelchair.
When she parks she has to find a wheelchair accessible parking space
that allows her to deploy the ramp so she can roll down. Which means
that she has to find a space with the yellow stripes to the left side of
her ven. I thought that this shouldn't be a problem. I have a disabled parking pass of my own and I use it without any hesitation as I do have
a legitimate reason to use it. Until today I never realized how
important that the lines and space was to somone like my friend.
We started by going to the apple store at the mall. She deployed her
ramp and got out of her van just fine. She told me she has two choices
leave her van open and ramp deployed while she is in the store which
dishonest people would rummage through her van stealing what they can
find... or close her van up which means her ramp folds back up into the
van.
We were only going to be there for an hour... but it ended up being
three hours because when we came out three motorcycles were parked in
the striped area where the ramp would fold down... I looked at her and
asked her if I could back the van out so she could fold the ramp down.
That would have worked but her van had no pedals all hand controls and I
was not comfortable doing this.
She said her only other options were to...
1. Wait for the motocycles to come out
2. Go shop some more and hope they are gone when she returned.
3. Call mall security / police
We waited for a bit there at the car, we really wanted to go eat a new
India Palace restaruant and take advantage of their lunch buffet
and we had more than an hour to get there.
We skipped #2 and went to #3... I walked in the mall to have security
come by, she decided to call the police while I was in there.
When I came out we waited 30 minutes for the police to show up and only
after the police showed up did mall security show up. The police asked
mall security to go look at the footage and see if they can ID the
owners of the motorcycles.
30 more minutes passed and we now had 20 mins to go to the buffet she
wanted to try... motorcycles still there and the police officer decided
to call impound, as he was kind of miffed because the motorcycles parked
in the striped line. Listening to the discussion between my friend and
the officer I learned that this is a very common thing... that
motorcyclists do not realize that the space is for ramps. I also picked
up that at Wal-Mart and other stores that have limited space other
poeple with disabled parking passes will park in the striped areas when
there is not enough room inconveniencing people with the ramps literally locking them into the parkign space until they are done.
Radio came back and said it would be 45 minutes before an impound unit
would arrive and they needed "three" untis because they can tow a
motorcycle but only 1 per truck.
My friend remaind calm and accepting as if this was something she dealt
with all the time. We knew at that point the place she really wanted to
eat at was not goign to happen. She remained stoic... but i could see
the disappointment in her eyes.
We waited almost 45 minutes, the cop was nice he stayed with us he did
go through the McDonald's drive in and get us a soft drink which was
very nice, but he waited there letting us know if he caught a run he
would have to leave. The motorcycles had three bright pink tow stickers
on them and citations taped to their windows... which was nice to know
that they were each goign to be fined $115 plus court costs but that
didn't help our situation.
After waiting almost two hours finally three young men (who did not look
like bikers with leather and all) came strolling out of a place called
the "Brewhouse" we had many nice people stop and talk to us apparantly
they had some "brew" and had to sit and wait a while to make sure they
were able to drive away. The cop gave them a VERY stern talkign to
letting them know that they inconvenienced us.
They gave us an apology which was pretty half-hearted. And were on
their way... we called the India Palace and unfortunately they were
closed until dinner... just when we were about to give up hope a lady
came out of the mall from an Italain place called Bucca di Beppo and
invited us in. We were hungry so we went back in and had an amazing
experience they had a special table in the kitchen and we were treated
like royalty. I did not care how much it cost I was going to pay (she
had a buy one buffet get one buffet coupon to the other place and I
still was going to pay we are both disabled and money is tight.)
They just kept bringing food for us to try, apparently the table in the
kitchen is meant to be for special times and we got to taste a bit of everything. When we went to pay the lady who came out said that she
heard it from a friend who worked at the ear-ring hut that was a friend
of hers what happened to us. She said the meal was complimentary I've
never saw my friend cry before but it really touched her.
I cringed when we went out to her car but her ramp was not blocked so it
was off to Target. We spent time shopping and having fun at target,
when we went out to the van another car with a disabled window tag was
parked in the stripes. My friend sighed and said this one will be
easier since it's ONE store and not a mall. I went in and told the
service desk what happened. The manager paged the owner of the vehicle
and a very "entiled" young lady came out and looked at my friend and
said, "I don't see what the big deal is we both have tags."
Looking at the young lady I couldn't see one thing wrong with her and I
just told her the wheelchair ramp folds down into the lines she was
parked at. She looked at us like we were nothing so I added, "oh and
hte police have been called and they will check to see if -YOU- are the
one that belongs with that tag."
She looked at us and the Target superviser and said, "I ain't got time
for this I gots to go." And she left... in a hurry.
The manager said she had a whole cart of stuff she left behind too...
hopefully the lesson stuck in, but this opened my eyes. I know with my disability it's easy for me to fall in the trap of not noticing others
but those lines are important...really important for the disabled who
are in wheelchairs.
Sorry for writing so much today, I learned something and had to share
it.
Allen
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