You Don’t Have It So Bad

Photo by Jacky Watt on Unsplash, Edited by Matt Murray

Do you remember searching through the catalogs and finding the perfect shoes you just needed? Or maybe it was some games you thought you just couldn’t live without? I’m sure some people reading this don’t even know what catalogs were. They were those things that you use to get in the mail or in stores showing all of the merchandise that you could buy. I’m probably dating myself here.

I remember getting the Sears catalog and searching through it trying to find everything I would want to buy. But in reality, I couldn’t buy all of that stuff because I didn’t have money to buy it. But I could look at it and marvel at what I could do with all those items.

Or maybe you were one of those people that got excited about going to the zoo. Or you couldn’t live without something.

But what if you could never get that special item you wanted? Or you could never go to the zoo?

Imagine if you couldn’t take part in any of that?

A few weeks ago I was in a fast food establishment. It was a fluke that I was there that day. I was eating my lunch. I’m sure you’re probably wondering what I had but I can’t remember.

I looked out the window and saw a car pull into the handicapped parking space. It’s in the front of the restaurant. It was a white car. I saw an older lady with gray hair get out of the driver’s side. Sometimes I’m not good at figuring out people’s ages. I estimated she was in her late sixties to early seventies.

She went over to the opposite side of the car. She opened the rear passenger door. I saw her help someone out of the car. I thought it was just another elderly person but it was not.

It looked like she was getting the person into a wheelchair. There was no wheelchair.

What I’m about to tell you was the farthest thing from my mind.

As the two moved toward the sidewalk, I noticed the older woman had her arm around the waist of another woman. The elderly woman was wearing a blue and white striped sweater. She was helping the woman walk. So the elderly woman was behind the other woman pushing her along. She couldn’t walk for herself. Her legs were moving but it was a struggle. The younger woman had on jeans. She looked to be in her forties. She had short brown hair.

Once they entered the store, I could hear the woman making sounds. It was like she couldn’t talk, so she had to murmur something. I’m not an expert on diagnosing anything but I wonder if she had non-verbal autism.

I was seated in a booth right near the door they had entered through. I was saying to myself inside, not to sit near me. They sat down in the next booth next to me. I thought, “Great!”. I don’t mean this in a bad way. It’s just that I have never been around someone with an affliction like that. I didn’t know what to expect.

The older woman put a tall plastic bottle of juice down on the table. She got a bib out of her purse and placed it around the woman’s neck. She gave her a magazine or something to look at. Then she left.

To be honest, I don’t think she should have left her alone. She went back to the car and got her purse. Once she came back into the restaurant, she put something on the table and went to the cashier to order food.

She sat back down with a plastic placard with a number on it. This was used to tell the workers what table required which food.

The autistic woman was making sounds.

I was almost finished with my meal. I had ice in my drink and it was getting near the bottom. I didn’t have a top on my drink and I was not using a straw. As I tipped the cup up to drink the remainder of my soda and then set the drink down, the ice made a noise as it moved back to the bottom of the cup. The woman bent her head back and looked at me. Her eyes were barely open. It was like she was looking into my eyes and wondering what was going on. I moved the ice around in the cup two more times and she looked both times. The last time I did it, she did not look.

When I see people who are afflicted with these issues, I feel sad for them. They can’t have a normal life. Everyone deserves to have a normal life. Why does this happen to people? I feel sorry for them.

The Point

The point of this story is that we worry about a lot of stuff. Sometimes we think we have it bad. We might be out of a job, have a bad day at work, wished we could buy things, someone made us mad, or something else. But after seeing this person, I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t have it as bad as we thought.

Think of what this woman must go through to live her life, a life that she didn’t expect to work out this way. She might not even know what is going on.

I wasn’t supposed to be there that day. Everything happens for a reason. Someone wanted me to be there that day to see that and write about it.

Her story is out now.

I don’t know her name but does that even matter.

There is more to life than what we think. This is one of those real life lessons.

Until next time, happy reading!

-Matt

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