I was making a long bike ride to my favorite bike shop to get pannier bags, after an incident yesterday finally kicked my butt into gear to always have a first-aid kit on my bike. (They were fine, or at least they tried to convince me thereof.)

It’s a long bike ride, but it’s worth it to me to go to that specific shop. It was also a somewhat warm day, so I was trying to make sure I stayed hydrated.

About halfway through the ride to the shop, I came upon a car stuck on the road, with another one facing it. At first, I thought the two had crashed, but the car facing me drove into a parked position with no damage. The other one was just immobile, and the first guy was there to push.

I asked if they needed help. They accepted, so I left the bike on its kickstand and helped push the car into a better parking position.

This happened on a residential street, so before I left, hoping that one of the two lived in the house this happened in front of, I asked if they could get me some cold water, as I’d already gone through about half the water I’d brought and it wasn’t cold.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t, and I accepted that and moved on, continuing west down the same street.

Half a mile later, the person who still had a functional car drove past me, and then we stopped at the same red light. After the light, they continued forward until a garage door opened at a house on the right as they pulled into that driveway.

As I passed them, I turned to look, and I saw them waving me over. I turned around and went back, and they offered to get me some cold water from inside. I very gratefully accepted!

Later, I made it to the bike shop and got the pannier bags, and then I got lunch from a nearby restaurant and took it to a park. One of the houses neighboring the park had a small dog yapping at me, and someone who I assumed was the dog’s owner said hi as I was setting up to eat.

As I finished my meal and started to pack up, the same person shouted over at me, asking if I wanted a water bottle for the road. When I showed them the one I had, they asked if I wanted it topped up with filtered water and ice. I did, in fact!

The actions of those two kept me hydrated and refreshed for the entire journey. The bottle still had ice in it when I got home, though it ran out of water as I took one last gulp in my driveway. (In fact, it still has that ice in it as I write this five hours later!)

When I was a little kid, my parents signed me up to play soccer once a week with a neighborhood team. I played it for a few years, until one day in mid-elementary school when I came home from the final game of the season looking like someone had stolen my favorite stuffed animal. I went to my room without saying much.

Dad: “Did something happen at the game?”

Mom: “She’s sad because they stopped offering pizza at the end of the season. She said that if she knew there wasn’t going to be any pizza, she wouldn’t have signed up at all this year.”

Dad: “You’re kidding.”

Mom: “Nope.”

Dad: “I’d have paid for a d*** pizza every week if it meant I didn’t have to sit on a cold bleacher every Saturday morning.”

Up until this point, I had thought of pizza as a special treat that had to be earned by doing something hard (like playing soccer). It genuinely had not occurred to me that Mom and Dad had money, that money could be exchanged for pizza, and that pizza was a lot cheaper than organized soccer.

I work for a popular Midwest one-stop grocery store in the pick-up/curbside department. My favorite part of the job is picking items in the store. While I don’t enjoy taking items out to customers in their cars, it is something I am capable of doing.

I came into work on a Tuesday (one day before a big winter storm is projected), and the department is crazy busy. People have to wait much longer than normal for their groceries to be taken out to their car, and shopping is behind. It is a mess.

One of my coworkers, who is responsible for taking orders from customers in the parking lot, is stressed. Again, while I do not enjoy taking orders out to customers, I am capable. I tell my coworker to go ahead and take a break, and I start getting things around for the next order, scanning them, placing them on the takeout cart, etc.

I walk outside and to the designated parking spot, the customer rolls down the window, and I cheerfully say:

Me: “Good evening. Mr. [Customer Name]?”

Customer: “What the h*** has taken so long? I have been sitting here for an hour and a half!”

Me: “I apologize, Sir. The impending winter storm caused an influx of orders that we just were not staffed to cover. These are not excuses. I understand you had to wait for a while, and that is not right. If you would like, I can request a coupon for your next order?”

Customer: “I have a lot of things to do today. A lot of things. Waiting here isn’t one of them.”

Me: “I understand. Would you like me to provide you with the phone number to customer service?”

Customer: “People shouldn’t have to wait for their orders.”

Me: “You are absolutely right, sir. Would you like me to get a manager to see how we can rectify this?”

Customer: “I mean, other people have gotten their order, and I am just sitting here. I don’t have time to sit here.”

At this point, I am noting how odd this is. He is complaining that he has had to wait for an hour and a half, and we have now had a long conversation on top of that, and nothing I am doing is working. I proceed to load his groceries into his trunk, close it, and then tell him:

Me: “Have a nice day, and I am very sorry about your wait, sir.”

Customer: “It’s just, you know, I shouldn’t have to wait.”

Me: “No, sir.”

I try a different tactic.

Me: “Well, since I have kept you an additional few minutes now and you have other things to do, I am going to step away and let you get on with your day.”

Customer: “Finally! Thank you.”

I don’t understand why he needed my permission to go. So strange, but it worked.

I am Deaf with a capital D and have been since I was born. I can still hear a bit, but not much without help. 

At the time of this story, I had recently started wearing hearing aids as prior to that I had not known that I was eligible. I have industrial piercings (a bar across the tops of my ears) that I tuck the wire of my aids behind to prevent them from falling off. I also have hearing aid stickers and charms that I rotate depending on my mood. I am incredibly passionate about disability advocacy and disability rights, so I took several disability studies classes in undergrad.

During this story, I was in an entry-level disability studies class that was viewed as a relatively easy class, so there were a lot of frat bro type students in it. We were mid-discussion on accommodations and mobility/accessibility aids at the time of this story when one of said frat bros joined the conversation.

Me: “I’ve been using a hearing aid for a bit now, and I recently got an industrial piercing to help keep the wire tucked behind my ear. It keeps it in place, so it doesn’t fall off.”

Frat Guy #1: *Eyes full of joy and whimsy.* “Wait, hold up! That’s actually so cool! It’s like you’re a cyborg! Like, some steampunk, body-mod, half-human, half-machine hybrid!”

Frat Guy #2: *Nodding.* “Yeah, it’s like in those sci-fi movies where the tech is a part of who you are! That’s so sick!”

Me: *Laughing.* “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a cyborg, but that’s a really fun way to put it. I’m definitely not that cool.”

Frat Guy #1: “Nah, Cyborg Girl, that’s super cool. Can we see it?” 

After explaining how fragile it is and showing them what it looked like with the piercing, I let them pass it around their little group.

There were probably about five of these huge frat guys, passing around my hearing aid like it was some sort of precious gem, oohing and aahing at the sticker and charms. Eventually, it was passed back to me, and I put it back on.

From that point forward, my nickname to those guys was “Cyborg Girl,” and they were incredibly serious about accessibility for me. If people in discussions didn’t speak loudly enough, one of the guys would tell them off for it. I took a few other classes with them they would correct the professors as well.

In academia, which is full of structural and personal ableism, that interaction with them was such a breath of fresh air. In other situations, their comments might have been a bit mean, but their curiosity and awe were so genuine. I’ve dealt with a lot of academic ableism so whenever I feel beaten down by it, I just think about those guys and their allyship. It was just so sweet and definitely a faith in humanity restored situation.

In the early 1990s, I had a student job as a computer site monitor. This was in the days before ubiquitous student-owned computers, so the computer site was where people would go to type up their papers and print them out.

The process was simple. You handed your ID to the monitor on duty, and they would file it in a numbered wall niche and give you the card from that niche. You would use the computer whose number matched the card. When you were done, you’d return the card and get your ID back.

An important side note is that any computers that were out of order would have their number cards removed from their niche and also have notes taped to the front of the monitors so that they could be easily identified for later repair. This lab had a model of computer with power supplies that would sometimes overheat with heavy use. Fortunately, they would usually emit a faint, high-pitched whine when they started to go bad. Once that was heard, they got tagged and called in so that IT could add them to their repair queue.

One evening, things were very busy and there was confusion at the desk: students were showing up to return their number cards, but the ID in the niche wasn’t theirs. It turns out that a group of friends had decided to sit together and, rather than asking to be reassigned a different computer, had simply traded their number cards with people who came in and who were supposed to be using the stations that they had taken.

This took several minutes to sort out. Shortly after everyone’s IDs had been reshuffled, one guy from the group of friends came hurrying up to the desk.

Guy: “My computer screen just went black!”

Me: *Sigh* “Which computer are you sitting at?”

Guy: *Pointing back toward the group* “The one over there.”

Me: “The one with smoke coming out of it?!“

Guy: “Yeah! What do I do?”

Me: “Unplug it right now!“

It turned out that he had sat down next to a friend without even checking in at the desk, took the “Out Of Order” sign off the front of the machine, powered it up, and was happily hanging out with his friends, the noise of their chatter drowning out the faint whine until an overheated capacitor blew and let out the magic smoke.

After it was determined that there was no actual fire, the student got a sound scolding by Campus Safety — at the end of which, he had the audacity to ask if there was any way for me to recover the paper he had been working on because it was due the next day.