Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Claire's Thoughts / You look so happy
You look so happy
Written by Claire on Saturday, May 10, 2008
Yesterday I wheeled into a Starbucks. The lady in line behind me said to me “You look soooooooooo happy!”
This surprised me a bit…yes, I was feeling good, but I hadn’t been grinning like an idiot or anything. I kind of dumbly said “I do??”
She said “Yes, it just radiates from you!” Then the cashier, who was listening, added “I know! I thought the same thing when she first came in here.”
I wasn’t doing anything different. Nothing special was happening. I was just going for coffee…and wheeling. I am simply happier when I wheel. I have had comments from other people that I seem like a happy person. But I’m not, in general, a very happy person. It only seems to be when I wheel that people say things like that.
Vote if you like
this post.0
Vote
This entry appears in Claire's Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You may have your say, or trackback from your own site.
4 Comments
I know that feeling, and I’ve had a similar experience. I think of it as the happiness that arises from being how you’re supposed to be, and your awareness of your happiness, and the knowledge that you’ve succeeded in manipulating your world in order to be that way, even if only temporarily.
I was actually on a wheeling trip yesterday in two local towns called Ladner and Cloverdale, and I felt the exact thing that Nobody described, especially the thing about manipulating your world. Going to an unfamiliar place for wheeling trips is like entering a new world where you are a “real” paraplegic (even though you’re actually not), and just to live out a day in this new world is just satisfying.
I haven’t had someone tell me I look happy when I wheel, but I suspect that I do, because I’ve had people express how impressed they are that “someone like you” is so independent and such. It’s like the theory that telling a girl that she looks tired is the same as saying she looks ugly — when someone says they’re impressed at my independence, it feels the same as someone saying I look confident and happy in the world.
This thought of Claire prompted me to go to Starbucks today, and thence this comment. It has not even been three weeks since I first ventured with leg braces out in public. Now I feel so strange and naked without them. On the way home from my psychotherapy session I stopped in the grocery store, with the Starbucks nearby. I couldn’t resist; remembering what Claire had said. The barista greeted me with such a big welcoming smile. I smiled back, exchanging pleasantries. He seemed to be much more interested in my skimpily clad curvaceous upper body than the crutches and braces. Nobody said I looked happy; but I did feel happy, just being myself.
Post your comments
© transabled.org - 1994-2008 - All Rights Reserved.
1 On 11 May, 2008, Ronald said:
It would appear this observer expects the disabled to be depressed, negative, bitter and anti-social. Now, she can go home and feel smug for a long time, having made her first positive contact with a “special person”. I hope she does not dislocate a shoulder reaching around to pat herself on the back.