capri0mni | random, odd thoughts (Reply)

Sometimes, late at night, when I'm tired but insomniac, I play computer Solitaire. And when I'm really tired, I get the feeling that it's not me playing the game, but rather, that the cards are competing against each other -- particularly that the queens are trying to keep the jacks from usurping, while resenting the kings for usurping their place.

(I told you these were odd thoughts!)

Way back when, some 15 or 20 years ago, I had to figure out my height, for some reason -- maybe for my New York State ID. But when I stand up on crutches, I can't stand straight. So Dad took a string, and measured from my ankle to my knee, knee to my hip, and so on. And then we added those numbers together and came up with 4'10". And that's the number I've held in my head ever since, So when I got my new Virginia State ID, and it said my height was 4' even, I thought the woman who refilled out the paperwork made a mistake. But then, the other day, I was standing at a grab bar, right beside a window; I can stand straighter at a grab bar than I can on crutches. And I noticed my head came right up to the middle devider in the window pane. So, I figured I could settle the descrepency, and I measured from that bar to the window sill, then from the sill to the floor. The result? 4'3". The woman at the DMV has probably seen so many different people, of all different heights, come in every day that by now, she can just eyeball someone's height at a glance, and knew what I'd written down was way off.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I feel justified in having diffeculties with public wheelchair accessible accommodations (By law, they're designed to be of use to someone who's 5'8") -- that it's not just me being picky and inflexible (mentally or physically). On the other hand, I feel a bit like I've been thrown back to childhood -- by law, any kid under 4'8" has to sit in the back of the car, in a booster seat. My wheelchair is pretty much a booster seat, but it's still disconcerting to think that, standing up, I'm shorter than the average 11 year old. And I'm never going to grow any taller.

"All else being equal" is a common enough phrase, but it is totally untrue. You can never change just one thing in a system, and have everything else remain the same. Everything's connected. If you change one thing, everything else changes, too, whether it's about how much soap a person uses in the shower to whether a pitcher will walk X batters in a baseball game.