When you’re a wheelchair user, ‘just get the next bus’ is adorable — as if the next bus isn’t busy auditioning for Where’s Wally?, the ramp isn’t on annual leave, and the driver isn’t about to announce it’s terminating three stops early for ‘reasons’.
Going out in a wheelchair is like having a full‑time job — except the buses are your useless coworkers, and the ramps are always ‘off sick’.
It’s not like we’re deliberately trying to inconvenience anyone — we’re just out here trying to live our lives while the buses and ramps run their own chaotic side‑quests.
We’d rather not be disabled — it’s not like any of us woke up one morning and thought, ‘You know what would really spice up my life? A wheelchair.
Going out in a wheelchair is basically The Great Escape — except instead of tunnels and barbed wire, it’s broken ramps, missing buses that have clearly joined the resistance.
And people are so rude — or they stare at you as if they’ve never seen a disabled person before, as if we just rolled in from outer space on a NASA‑issued wheelchair.
We’re definitely an ‘inconvenience’ to able‑bodied people — not because of anything we’re doing, but because the transport system behaves like it’s allergic to disabled passengers.
You get the nodding heads and the tut‑tuts of disapproval — like we’ve personally ruined their day by daring to exist in public.
Me? I’m quite rude about it. If someone stares or gives me that disapproving look, my mouth just starts before my manners do — I’m disabled, not dead, and I’m certainly not here to silently entertain the public.
I’ve had buses drive straight past me — and not just one, but two in a row, like they were competing in some Olympic sport called ‘Pretend You Didn’t See the Wheelchair.
Then we have the mums with prams. If it’s a newborn and they genuinely can’t fold the pram, fair enough — I’ll happily wait. But the mums who can fold it and simply won’t? Come on. The wheelchair space isn’t optional seating; it’s the only place I can physically exist without recreating The Great Escape.
I might not look sick, but I use a wheelchair because I genuinely can’t walk or stand — and yet I still get people staring and saying, ‘You don’t look sick,’ like disability is supposed to come with a neon sign and a Victorian fainting couch.
The trouble these days is that people have been pampered by convenience — so the second they have to share space, adjust, or show a bit of humanity, they act like it’s a personal attack.
“As I always say to people: ‘You should try it one day — it’s a barrel of laughs.’ And by laughs, I mean the kind you get when the universe is clearly doing stand‑up at your expense.”
People’s mean comments are the best, aren’t they? You roll in minding your own business, and suddenly you’re public property — judged, stared at, and offered opinions no one asked for, like they’re auditioning for Britain’s Got Rudeness.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 