My alma mater was and still is designed to enable disabled people to get around campus and into buildings and classrooms with ease. They have elevators, ramped entrances, ramped street corners, and every method imaginable to make the college experience easier. In fact, the entire town was set up, mostly, for the disabled, especially wheelchairs.

We students became part of their lives in a way by being available to help as best we could, such as the time a girl was rolling too fast to make the turn on the sidewalk and flipped out on the pavement. She was fine. Three of us nearby put her back in business and went on our way.

But there were some people who were… obnoxious. On my way to class on the second floor, I headed into an elevator just before a guy rolled up in his wheelchair. He just sat there right outside the door while I held it open for him.

Guy: “Why are you on the elevator? You can walk. Why don’t you use the stairs?”

I stepped out, holding the door open, and looked all around the entrance to the elevator.

Me: *Glaring at him* “I don’t see any sign that says it’s for disabled people only. So, are you getting in or not?”

Guy: “You can use the stairs. I’m not riding up with you.”

I pushed the button to close the door and went up to the second floor, leaving him fuming downstairs.

I am in a history class at college. Our professor has a doctorate in history and is usually a very serious and solemn man. One of our classmates trips and falls on a step in the lecture hall, but she’s fine.

Classmate’s Friend: *Jokingly* “Help! Is there a doctor in the building?”

Everyone looks at the professor with a smirk.

Professor: *Without skipping a beat* “I’m a doctor who can’t fix your broken bones, but I can amuse you with stories about the Civil War until the ambulance comes.”

In my eighth-grade year, I went out for football, much to my disliking. I only wanted to play basketball. During a practice, I threw a running, diving block, and the end result was that I had my spleen ripped apart and had to have emergency surgery to remove it.

Fast forward to my sophomore year. Our football coach started getting on me about going out for football the next year. I would simply tell him I wasn’t interested, and he would let it go for the time being.

His class and my class shared the same lunch period. For several days, he bugged me about playing football. I was 6’3″ and the second-fastest kid in school. I didn’t want to play. He started making snide remarks about my maleness, among other catty remarks.

Finally, I had had enough. He said something that set me off, and I pulled up my shirt right there in the lunch room and showed him my eleven-inch scar.

Me: “This is why I don’t want to play football.”

His jaw dropped, and he just stood there staring at my abdomen as I turned to walk out.

Later that day, my psych teacher told me what happened after I left. The coach sat back down with the other teachers still hanging out at a table and asked what that was all about. It was explained to him what happened to me in eighth-grade football and that I had been injured so badly that I’d had an hour and a half to live.

The coach never brought it up again. But, he also never spoke to me again for the rest of my high school years. Oh, well.

At my high school, we use this assignment tracking website to, well, keep track of our assignments, and using it is a part of your grade in some classes.

One day, a substitute teacher in first period tells us to pull out our laptops, open Chrome, and go to the assignment tracker. Most students use school-provided computers, but I brought my own laptop to school, running Windows. I don’t have Chrome installed, and I don’t have admin permissions on that laptop, so I can’t install it, so I open up Firefox and log in to the tracker.

The teacher begins walking around the room, making sure we’re all doing what we’re supposed to. She stops at my desk.

Teacher: “You’re not using the right software.”

Me: “Oh, did I go to the wrong website?”

Teacher: “You have to use Chrome; Firefox will not work.”

Right as she says this, the tracker loads up fine.

I turn my laptop to face her to prove that it is working fine, but she keeps standing there, continuing to insist that I use Chrome, ignoring the other person that needs help. She goes over there to help that person, but only after telling me to open Chrome and open the tracker there.

Instead of installing Chrome, I instead download its icon from the Internet and change the Firefox icon on my taskbar to the Chrome logo.

The teacher comes back over to my desk.

Teacher: “You have to use Chrome. If not, I’ll have to write you up for not following directions.”

I pointed to the Chrome icon on the taskbar. She just scowled and went back up to the front of the room.

I didn’t get written up that day.

The college history professor is starting up his first lecture of the year.

Professor: “First, I just want to make one thing clear. When you hand in your texts this semester, I will make little comments in the margins, either telling you that you’ve done something wrong and need to correct it, or complimenting you on having made your point. Now, if you write something like, say… ‘The National Socialist movement outlawed Jewish business ownership and started a systematic purging of Jews from German economic and social life,’ and the comment in the margin says, ‘Excellent,’ that means I think you have done well, not that what the Nazis did was a good thing. Okay? Now, this year, we will be…”

The whole class snickered.