Category: Story

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A Story on Growing Confidence and Pooping With the Door Open

How courage and confidence have become my priority for putting myself first.

The university I attended had a lot of inaccessibility. So much so that there was a group that started just to address it, I’m talking about basic ADA compliance. There’s a bathroom with only a single stall that when I go in, the wheelchair doesn’t even get all the way in and so the stall door won’t shut.

Once I had to go to the bathroom (a different one than mentioned above), and the larger stall was occupied. As an aside, I try not to get upset at people who use these stalls and don’t need to, because honestly, who would want to do business in the small tight stalls? Anyway, I really had to pee and ended up peeing my pants because of the stall being occupied. I even took the elevator to another floor and found the larger stall in use there as well. I took the next week to do my schooling from home to avoid this happening again.

When I came back to the university campus, my friend introduced me to a new way of thinking. It’s called “dude, who cares, do what you need to do.” In action, this translates to: when I have to pee, as long as I’m in the bathroom, I’m going to pee. I don’t need to go into a stall, I can just go next to a urinal, and if not that, then just face a wall or a corner. If I need to poop, I don’t need a big stall, I just need to get close enough to a toilet so I can transfer onto it.

Here’s the story, and not the only instance of this. I was at whole foods eating some food and waiting for a tow truck to pick up my brother’s car and we got hungry. As a human wont, I had to pee. On my way to the bathroom, the very kind security guard came running down the hall after me to give me a lot of help (more than I need, but I truly love people of this kind heart). He held open the door and was seemingly ready to do anything. He actually waited for me to finish so he could open the door for me on my way out and asked many times if I needed help with anything.

Here’s the thing, there were two stalls, one larger and one smaller, both occupied. Without hesitation, I go to the urinals to pee, wash my hands, and go back to finish eating. As soon as I get back to the table, I realize I need to poop. I usually can tell just like anyone else, but it’s hard to predict when I’ll have waited too long, and then I’ve reached the point of no return. This was a moment of no return, I had waited too long. I bolt back to the bathroom, hoping to avoid the security guard’s notice, and knowing that at this point, the best I can do is minimize the trouser attrition.

Naturally, the larger stall is taken, but I entirely do not care. I go into the smaller stall, the door doesn’t shut but I can get in. Facing the toilet, I 180 transferred while taking off my pants and released the Kraken. All the ruckus doubtless grabs the attention of the guy in the larger stall, who certainly feels poorly about himself (and I’m not without a shit tonne of resentment). I’m still on the toilet, (with my pants up at this point) when the guy gets out to wash his hands and I stare deep into his soul when he catches my glance in the mirror.

I finished up, washed my hands, went back to our table, finished my food, the tow truck came, we left to go to the broken down car, and I went home to shower.

The point is, I’m absolutely done letting anything get in my way when I need to do something, especially when the implications are trouser attrition. This requires a lot of confidence and courage, it’s harder to do at work where I’ll see these people day in and day out, but they won’t want to admit it happened any more than I’ll want it to happen. Ultimately, it’s a mindset and value change, it’s not easy to do, but necessary if you respect yourself.

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A Loud Descent – Selected Story

Reading time: 4 minutes

I had a feeling that they weren’t working, I was hungry and my brain hurt, and I really hate wasting time. I knew exactly what to do, and I was oddly happy to do it.

In college, in an Electrical Engineer and a Computer Engineer, double major baby. On a rather chilly day in the evening I was walking on campus to go to the electrical engineering building (EERC) for one of my labs.

I head in and there’s a line for the elevators (lifts), only one of three are working, the other two are under maintenance. The one working is also the smallest, and has to bring people to a combination of 8 floors each trip, and stopping along the way down to pick people up.

I don’t like to wait in lines, and honestly, I could’ve easily jumped ahead in this one because for me, the elevator is arguably necessary, maybe not for getting to the second floor, but for getting to the 6th floor, not many people would argue. And besides, others can actually take the stairs.

I decided not to use my line pass and just went and talked with a friend for a while. I call it networking in motion, like when I have phone calls while cooking or driving.

Once I got to my lab, I did lab stuff that lasted the allotted time, then left.

This is when I went to the elevators, noticed that both the up and down buttons were lit up, and my intuition told me lifts aren’t working. I pushed the buttons a few times just in case and waited about 1 minute.

In some form of satire, in the EERC, the elevators are almost constantly breaking down and getting worked on. This wasn’t a surprise, and because I’ll be having a lot of my classes in that building, I reckoned there will be a few times I either can’t get up or can’t get down (with the elevators).

Luckily, I’m awesome and as soon as I knew the elevators weren’t working, I got a bit excited at the notion of my having to go down the stairs. Without hesitation, I went over to the door to get to the stairwell and immersed myself in the challenge.

I went up to the first of 12 sets of stairs, lined myself up, grabbed the rail, and plopped down. I actually went pretty fast, at some points I had lost a bit of control and hanging on to the rail was only keeping me upright, not controlling my speed.

With each stair, an echoing thump could be heard from my chair, I hoped no one would think someone was getting hurt. I did see a few people along the way, we talked for a bit and then parted (they went up as I went down). It must’ve been rather amusing, or eccentric to see someone in a wheelchair at coming down at the 4th floor.

I’m sure that bloke went back and told someone about me, which makes for two good stories to come of this. And makes me a bit more famous.

I later found out that my intuition was right, the elevators were shut off, but it wasn’t routine, so it wont happen at the same time again. Also, there’s a red phone to call for help somewhere around there, but honestly, It’s much easier to skip and hop down the stairs than wait for someone to fix the lift.

What will give you an idea of how little this upset me is that I was a bit more bothered that I was wearing an jacket too heavy for the weather and sweating a fair amount because of it. I actually love when I get some surprises and challenges, otherwise, for me, life is just to boring. I want things to happen, I want to overcome obstacles and struggle, I want to be challenged and always a good story to tell later on.

PS, you like that drop cap?

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Falling in Limbo – Selected Story

Reading time: 4 minutes

It’s not every morning I look in the mirror and wink at myself. I was feeling particularly great. I dressed up more than usual, great contrast to my average engineering outfit of pants and a t-shirt.

While I was living in Appleton, working at Kimberly-Clark, and a co-worker told me about an event going on at the local college. It was a book talk, the type of fireside chat an author might do when promoting a newly published book.

The author was Brad Smith, which sounds like the most average name ever, but he’s the president of Microsoft, which makes him someone that I want to listen to. I take any opportunity to be around people like him or the type of people that go to listen to him.

My colleague ended up not being able to go, so I had to go alone, which was fine because going alone places means that I can do more of my own thing.

I’m the type of person who always likes to have a plan, which can include winging-it and having no plan, but I plan for that. Now I have to plan a bit more because of being in a wheelchair. When I was signing up for this event – free for students – I emailed the event coordinator and mentioned that I’ll be in a wheelchair. She mailed back with instructions on where to park and where to go after.

Something worth highlighting is that this was an event free for students and that I am, but not of this school. I doubt they intended any student who was in the area to be able to attend for free, but while signing up online, it only asked about being a student and didn’t specify where.

I read through the instructions twice, washed behind my ears, and left early. If I’m not early, I’m late. Something can always go wrong, or an opportunity may arise, either way, I’d like to handle both without anxiety driven haste.

After I park, I head over to the building the talk will be at. It’s right next to a main road with a good bit of traffic. This is one of those campuses with building scattered around and mixed in with city streets and random buildings.

I go up to the main door, it opens, and I go in. But then there’s another set of doors right after, and right after that is a set of stairs. Nothing I can’t handle, just a few. I go to open the second door and it’s locked. Alright, so I go out and go around to the other side of the building and find another set of doors. Glass doors, so I can see through them and what I saw was just a bigger set of stairs just a meter after the doors. But I can see that at the top of the stairs and past another set of doors (double doors again) are people that look like helpers for the event.

I look to my right and see a ramp, I follow it with my eyes and discover that it leads to this building.

A benefit of living in America is the ADA, which means that every place has to be accessible. This is a public college, so it definitely has to be accessible, and I’m able to do a lot more than most people, so all I need is a sturdy handrail alongside some stairs and I can manage.

As soon as I make eye contact with the ramp, I see yellow caution tape blocking people from entering. I go over to inspect. The ramp goes up and then turns to the right, I can’t see past it, but from what I can see, the ramp looks fine. Smooth concrete all the way up.

I duck down and go into the danger zone. A lot of times people don’t clean up after themselves, and I reckoned that this was the same as when I drive down the road and see a “work zone ahead” sign, only to find a completed job and no construction.

I go up the ramp and turn right. The smooth concrete comes to an end, and the only thing left is a whales mouth ready to swallow me whole. I analyze it, hoping to think of a way that I could get around, after all, I can do anything.

Alas, I decide to turn around and figure out another way. As I’m coming down the ramp, I get to the caution tape and duck under it, but instead of bending forward, I get a rather silly and have some fun, I lean backward and limbo under the tape. It’s a bit lower than I can bend back because my backrest is too high. In my efforts, I tip myself back too far and then completely.

I made it under the tape, but I also found myself on the ground and out of the wheelchair. This was back when I didn’t wear the seatbelt.

I’m surprised no one from the road honked or even drove up onto the campus to help – a grandma would probably do something like that.

The chair didn’t fly out of reach, but it was on its side. I pulled it near me, grabbed the handrail from the ramp, and lifted myself back into the chair. And then put my seatbelt on.

That was probably the fastest I’ve ever had a fall and recover. I didn’t hesitate, I acted and got back up within a minute, probably faster. The first thing I checked was for any damage to my stunning outfit.