School life is tough for someone like me, so one thing that I like to do to help me cope is to sort the teens at school into different categories based on how they react to me and my disability. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging any of them: I’m a rather shy person who can be scared by social situations. I’m pretty sure that everyone at school would see me differently if I was a more out-going and confident person. But when you get as lonely as I do, it can help to sometimes play little games with yourself like the sorting of these categories. So here are the six types of reactions I get to my disability at school:
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1. The Angelic Bad Boys
One of the first things that I learned when I started at Secondary School was that I was never going to be a very good judge of character because people don’t act like their real selves in front of me. It’s always the case that the most mischievous boys, the ones that almost everyone says is trouble or generally not very nice to people, are extremely nice to me – nicer than most in fact. They go out of their way to open doors for me, pull out chairs for me, treat me nicely, and in general clap me on. They also tend to act interested in my technology: asking to ride on the back of my electric wheelchair or saying that my wheelchair’s trumpet is cool.
I often don’t notice their reputation as ‘rude boys’ until my friends tell me that that’s not how they actually are with other people. I’ve never understood why this happens so often: maybe they wouldn’t dare to be their usual teasing selves around me, or maybe they just don’t feel the need to put on their tough, bad boy façade around someone like me – who knows? I’m never that close with them and only truly meet them in passing, but I still find it intriguing that most of the so-called ‘bad boys’ feel the need to be nice to me. I’ve only ever come across one ‘bad boy’ who wasn’t afraid to insult me and act a little mean to me like he did with everyone else. It sounds silly, but I liked and respected him for that.
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2. The Avoiders
The Avoiders are the kids at school who spend most of their time avoiding me. It’s clear that they don’t know how to approach someone like me and are therefore made slightly uncomfortable by my presence. They often avoid eye contact and in general tend to stay clear of me.
The saddest Avoiders are ones who I used to be best friends with before my disease progressed and I lost the ability to walk. We used to be so close, but because I now have to use an electric wheelchair, they see me differently and no longer seem comfortable being around me. It can be almost painful passing them in the halls and seeing people who I used to be friends with now preferring to pretend that I don’t exist. But it’s okay – most of the children at school are Avoiders so I’m used to it. The best thing about Avoiders is that sometimes all it takes for them to stop being one is if we share a conversation and they see that I’m not that scary in real life. Then, they tend to relax around me and stop feeling the need to avoid me when they see me.
Avoiders can make me feel sad so I like having fun with it: you’ve got to make the best out of a bad situation, right? I LOVE testing how far the denial of my presence goes:
- Couples sometimes go to the empty hallway where I eat my lunch and discuss personal issues and relationship drama. This always amuses me because I’m literally right there, noisily chewing on a sandwich while they pour their hearts out. They must see me and my giant electric wheelchair, but for some reason, it’s as if my metaphorical invisibleness causes them to not be aware of my presence. They still turn away and stop talking when other teens pass them, but they seem fine with simply ignoring me while I eat in front of them. So I like to just sit there listening to their soap opera drama and enjoying my lunch – maybe they think the shy kid in the wheelchair is no threat, maybe they’re so used to ignoring me that they really don’t see me.
- I secretly love pranking my classmates because no one ever suspects that it’s me; and you’d be surprised just how far the denial goes. I was once sitting at a table in class with a boy who was avoiding me – it was just me and him at the table. When he got up to go to the toilet, I ripped a piece of paper out of my book, wrote something rude on it (nothing mean) and put it on his desk. He laughed when he saw it, obviously amused, and then looked around the entire classroom with a confused look on his face. He ended up asking every single person in that room if they were the one who put it there – everyone but me, even though I was the only one on his table and was sitting right next to him.
- I like sending people anonymous letters and notes and just sitting back and laughing as they point the finger at literally everyone but me. The denial of my existence goes so far that I was once able to prank my entire year group and never got caught! I’ve discovered that doing these pranks is better than spending all day crying in the bathroom about not being seen. If I’m already invisible – I might as well have some fun with it.
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3. The Abusers
At first, I found it difficult to identify which of my friends were Abusers and was therefore friends with a lot of people who weren’t really friends with me. Abusers are fake friends who stay with me to reap the benefits of having a disabled friend. I’m allowed to be late to my classes because there are only a few lifts at the school so I have to travel much further than the other students to reach my classes, and my classmates are allowed to be late too if they’re travelling with me.
Abusers often intercept me right before I enter a classroom and tell the teacher that they were late because they were travelling with me the entire way so that they won’t get in trouble. Abusers are especially nice when they get to ride in lifts with me or when I am unable to participate in an activity that they don’t want to do so that they can sit with me and miss out on it too – but they may not be so friendly in other circumstances.
I honestly don’t mind Abusers that much and struggle to say no to them. At least they’re better than Avoiders: I’d take temporary friendliness over no friendliness any day. Besides, they’re not causing any harm and some Abusers don’t realise that they’re only being nice to use me: they can spend an entire week with me, fascinated by my electric wheelchair and in love with all of the different lifts they get to take with me. Then they get bored and quickly realise that we actually have nothing in common and drop me. I don’t come across Abusers that often anymore, it was more an issue that I faced as a preteen. Teens my age aren’t really (intentionally) that shallow anymore.
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4. The Refusers
I’ve had my share of issues with Refusers back in the day. Refusers are teens who refuse to help me if I ask. Thankfully, I’ve only come across four during my time at school, but the damage that they inflicted still impacts me today: I used to need help to press the buttons on the lift to get upstairs at school otherwise I’d be trapped downstairs. I asked a girl to help me with the buttons and she refused, even though it wouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds for her to do so and she wasn’t doing anything at the time. I ended up being late to my class and had to explain what had happened to my teacher. My teacher asked the girl why she hadn’t helped me and the girl responded: “Because my parents didn’t pay for me to go to this school so that I could spend my time helping the disabled student.” And the sad part was that she was quoting her parents.
That girl’s parents were like the parents of the bully in the film Wonder – they obviously disliked the fact that I was going to the same school as their child. They asked the teachers in primary school for their daughter not to be asked to help me if I needed it and took every opportunity to show that I was clearly not welcome there. It wasn’t just them though: one of my best friends became a Refuser. We spent all of our time together, so I would often ask him for help. I guess that he grew tired of helping me though because all of a sudden he started saying no when I asked him and refused to help me – and I understood why.
I already found it challenging to ask for help, but after spending time with these Refusers, it’s become much more difficult. My close friends can’t understand why I don’t just ask them for something if I need help, but it’s because I don’t want to bore them and become a burden like I clearly did to my past friends who became Refusers – I’d rather just struggle on my own.
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5. The Nannies
Nannies are the opposites of Refusers – they love to help me out, but see me more as someone to look after rather than someone that they are equal to. I have no problem with Nannies because they’re often extremely nice to me and will go out of their way to help me and take care of me. They also give great advice and are always there if I need a loving shoulder to cry on. The thing is, we rarely talk about anything outside of them helping me or complimenting me. Nannies are also older students who treat me like a pet or a cute mascot, which sounds bad, but their honestly just really nice people, and they tend to do the same with the other younger students that they think are cute too.
I do appreciate Nannies, I just wish that they could see that they don’t always have to treat me nicely and take care of me. And that they can just talk to me as they would do with any other friend.
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6. The Equals
The Equals are usually my closest and best friends because they are the only ones who truly see me as equals. They see past my wheelchair to the person on the inside and are so used to me that they don’t even see my disability anymore. They encourage me to ask for help if they see me silently struggling and trying not to be a burden, tell me not to be afraid to be myself, and sometimes ask me to join them at their table if they see me eating alone.
I treasure the few Equals that I get to be friends with, so I can often mess up relationships with them by trying too hard or by stressing when I’m with them. Spending time with them can sometimes be scary or stressful because they mean so much to me, and I’ve had numerous negative past experiences with Refusers and Abusers that make me hesitant to truly open up and be myself around them. It sounds weird, but having conversations with people who treat me equally can sometimes be so intimidating that I choose to spend time alone instead because I’m so familiar with loneliness that it has become my comfort zone – It’s a bad habit that I’m trying to break. Even though I may not show it as much as I should, I’m always happy to have Equals around me and are thankful for the friendship they provide.
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That’s it for the list of categories! I dream of a day where everyone at school can be an Equal and see me for who I truly am despite my disability. But I know that unless major changes are made, both on my part, and in the society at school – it likely never will. That’s why I’m preparing to give a presentation to the younger children at our school about disabilities. I have given numerous presentations to my classmates before in hopes that it might make a difference in how they see me (to no avail), but this time will be different because I’ll be talking to a younger audience. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help prevent them from becoming future Avoiders. Have you ever encountered any of these types of kids at school?
I might do this same style of blog post in the future about different types of reactions from my teachers. And for those that are wondering what happened to the ‘My Journey’ posts, I decided to post them once every month instead of once every two weeks. See you next Sunday!
The Wheelchair Teen 
It’s great your sharing all the people who you’ve come across as a heads up for people, thanks for sharing! And I’m sorry you had to come across refusers 😢
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You’re welcome 🙂 – I thought it might be interesting to see social life from my perspective and how I interpret it. It’s okay, you don’t need to be sorry, if anything Refusers have helped me to appreciate the loving people in my life even more.
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Excellent expression
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Thank you 🙂
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There are better times ahead for you. You have great gifts and will do outstanding things with them. Keep moving forward.
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Thank you – I hope that there are. Maybe when I’m a little older, young-adults will in general feel more comfortable around me than teenagers do. Also, thank you for complimenting me on my gifts, this blog helps me to keep moving forward.
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“My teacher asked the girl why she hadn’t helped me and the girl responded: “Because my parents didn’t pay for me to go to this school so that I could spend my time helping the disabled student.””
I can understand people being rude or clueless (not that I condone rudeness, but I mean, on a level, I get where they’re coming from), but when called out, they should at least have the good grace of feeling a little ashamed. Even if their parents ingrained a certain type of behaviour into them…
Good luck on your presentation! Those younger kids need you.
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I agree, I wish that I could go back in time to when that girl said that. I feel like if it happened now I would have a lot more things to say to her…
Thank you for wishing me good luck on my presentation! I’m really excited for it and am confident that I can make a difference to how those children view disabled people.
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It’s good to know that you’re fond of finding ways to cope with your struggles just like what you do with your pranks. I find this post very entertaining and true. I actually do the same too. Categorizing is not judging. It’s called being an observer and it helps me choose the people I want to be with because I apparently believe in the saying that bad company corrupts good practice. Haha. You have to have a balance of the good and the bad. It is true that you can’t ask people to treat you normally but be so hurt about those people who treat you badly (like the refusers) because one way or another we all encounter mean people that would make us feel hard to move around our environment comfortably, so I think that you would be better off not worrying about them. This category making will definitely help you identify those you will ask for help and those you will avoid because it’s better if we detach ourselves from toxic people that make us feel unwanted. And I totally understand the feeling you often feel about the equals and I think the key is to trust them. If they were your real friends they wouldn’t mind you opening up to them or supporting you about your thoughts so try to lessen the fear of putting your trust to your equals, I’m sure they would love to hear form you. 🙂 Lastly, I think that you can learn not to incorporate loneliness with being alone. Like I said, it’s good to have a balance of everything else. You can see a lot when you change your perspective. Maybe your comfort zone is being with yourself–which is not necessarily a bad thing or habit to break– and sometimes being with your friends too. I hope this helps, I really enjoyed reading your post. 🙂 I’m apparently good at giving advice so if this helps, I’m glad. If not, tell me about it and we can work on something else. I want to be a friend of The Wheelchair Teen. Good luck on your presentation, tell me about it!
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Thank you so much for this comment, I truly appreciated the heart-felt advice. I’d never thought of changing my perspective concerning my loneliness! You’re right – I should trust Equals more and at least give them a chance to know the real me which is something that I’ve been trying to work more on lately, but I also shouldn’t punish myself for sometimes wanting to gather my thoughts by spending time alone. I can’t exactly avoid the toxic people at school, but I can stop caring what they think and worrying about them. I’m sure my experience at school would become much more pleasant if I focused more on the positives and less on the negatives.
This did help. To be honest, I was surprised to see such great and thoughtful advice in response to this post. Thank you for wishing me good luck on my presentation and saying that you enjoyed reading this blog post 🙂 And I’d be honoured to be a friend of Elle’s. 🙂
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I’m glad you found this helpful I’m so happy. ❤ hihi No worries, you're absolutely welcome! ❤
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You are such a beautiful soul. In the midst of all these you still find the strength to put them to words. I am really proud of you. I am sure you will be an inspiration to all those out there who are battling similar issues like you. You are strong and a great person. You can achieve whatever you want to achieve and nothing can get in the way of that. I am rooting for you 🤍.
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This comment almost moved me to tears, truly thank you for saying these incredible things about me. Putting these experiences into words is what gives me strength – writing is how I express myself and channel the world that I see around me. Also, when I write, I get amazing comments like this one which remind me that I can achieve whatever I want to achieve and help keep me going. So thanks from the bottom of my heart for rooting for me and saying that you’re proud – it means more than you could know.
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Anytime darling. I am always here. And always let these words stick with you. You are more than what you think you are. 😘🤗
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Big hugs 🖤🖤. It’s really interesting to hear about your experiences with your classmates in school! Wow, some people are rude.. that girl who quoted her parents.. no words. In my high school for me, there were a couple of Equals, some Refusers, a lot of Avoiders, and some Bullies (not sure where they’d fit in so I’m putting them separately). I love how you pranked people! It’s not something I could do, but I’m glad you are having fun with things 🤗!
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Thanks for the hugs ❤ Yes, the chances are that everyone has encountered at least one of these types of reactions at school. I'm sorry to hear that you were bullied though. Kids can be so cruel and uncaring! I wish that we could have met at school – I'm sure that we would have been friends 🙂 Luckily, I never encountered any serious bullying in Secondary School.
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I would have loved to be your friend in school!! 😀
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That’s awesome that you’ve given so many presentations! In secondary school I absolutely hated giving presentations and I would have never given any voluntarily :’) By now it’s a bit easier, but I still don’t like it. However, a while back I joined an organisation through which I’ll be giving presentations about asexuality (a sexual orientation about which there are a lot of misconceptions and a lot of people haven’t even heard of) so I’m just trying to remember that it’s for a good cause XD
But that girl who didn’t want to help you :O Like someone else mentioned, I can kind of understand not knowing how to act, but refusing to help when asked?? It’s sad that her parents taught her something like that… And kind of strange that it’s specifically about helping someone with a disability, because everyone in life needs help now and then – also able-bodied people. I used to travel by train a lot and I’ve helped I don’t know how many people carry prams and heavy suitcases onto the train and likewise so many times people would hold open doors for me when I was carrying like six bags and clearly struggling or when I was trying to heave a heavy suitcase into a luggage rack…
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I understand why you hated presenting, but like you said, it becomes much easier when you know it’s for a good cause. That sounds like awesome work that you’ll be doing with that organisation. Good luck to you with that! You’re right – I’ve never really thought about the fact that everyone needs help every now and then. I should have mentioned that to her when she said that to me. I wonder what her reaction would have been.
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Makes me so sad that you’ve had to deal with some of these people >.> But I am glad that you have found your equals ❤
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Me too ❤
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I found this to be really profound. When most of us think about a typical high school experience as able bodied people, there are so fewer categories. There are the people who like us, our friends, there’s acquaintances and then there’s the people who don’t like us. I imagine it would take on a very personal element when you have a disability and that’s tough. Very unfair.
Maryam
https://infinitelyadaydreamer.com
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Thank you. Yes, it can be tough. It took me a while to be able to differentiate between these different categories – when I was younger, I didn’t realise when people were just using me or were uncomfortable being around me. School can be tough for everyone, but I especially struggled socially with finding friends and avoiding problematic people. Thanks for commenting!
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I understand that! I struggled with the same things as a kid but of course without that different dimension of struggle. The world would be a much kinder place if we saw the hearts of other people and acknowledged them as wanting exactly the same things we would ourselves. Companionship, time, attention, respect. It goes on! x
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Exactly! That’s why I started this blog – to show my friends at school and other people, that even though I may be different on the outside, I’m still just a teenage girl and shouldn’t be treated differently. I’m happy that you agree. I wish that I had met you when I was in school! 🙂
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I couldn’t have said it better Denise. You’re so right. At the heart of it we are all equal and therefore deserve nothing but treatment and opportunities that reflect this truth! I would love to have met you in school. I think we’d have been great friends. Nonetheless, the internet is a fantastic resource and really allows you to connect with people even if not face to face. We can definitely grow closer! x
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Love, love, love your pranks. What a fun outlet. You have organized these types so well with explanations and examples. This could be part of a book. You have such a personable writing style. Hope you find more equals, they will be lucky to be your friend. You’re funny and smart.
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Thanks, that truly means a lot. ❤ Writing is my passion and how I express myself so it makes my day when I hear that my message is getting across and in an entertaining way. Luckily, I have much more Equals now than I did at the time that I wrote this post. 🙂
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I’m very glad to hear about that; more Equals. I think that as human beings, when we have a challenge to our bodies or our minds, it can lead us to be more introspective and self aware. That becomes our gift to the world, and our superpower. You are wise beyond your years.
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