6:16am March 24, 2015

Gimp Rule #1

Never, ever use another gimp’s adaptive equipment without asking first.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve done it a thousand times before, with permission. This one time it might not be okay.

I broke my friend’s manual wheelchair, her only way for mobility in the ER. It was already breaking and I sat in it and broke the rest.

This is the same person whose couch I shat on when I was really sick.

I need to replace the cushion. I may need to pay towards repairs of the wheelchair.

But this is important whether I have to pay or not.

It doesn’t matter how close friends you are.

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done it before.

ALWAYS. ASK.

And don’t ask in a manipulative way.

I was at Autreat once and laid down and an autistic woman took off with my wheelchair for joyriding without asking me. i was trapped on my couch until she came back, and spitting mad.

I had a friend acting as a caregiver. I’ll call her Rhonda. The person who stole my wheelchair, I’ll call Danielle. Danielle started asking Rhonda if she could use my chair “just for a little bit”. Rhonda kept saying no. Danielle kept coming up with reasons she “deserved” to use my chair. She said “My back is killing me I have so much pain and the chair will help. Rhonda happened to be intimately familiar with that kind of back pain, and suggested real solutions, which involved lying on the floor in a specific position. Danielle’s back pain suddenly disappeared, “Oh it doesn’t hurt anymore, I don’t need to do that, I just need to use her chair.”

This went on for the entire presentation, I’m told.

Needless to say I have never let her even touch my chair again.

Later on, she was following me around with no boundaries at all. I was told to tell her she was violating my boundaries. I did. She proceeded to say – repeatedly, every time I saw her – “I want to talk to you, so you can teach me about the boundary stuff.” Which itself was violating my boundaries.

Anyway, I feel terrible. But I know that my feeling terrible won’t fix her chair. So next month when I get paid (or if the cost is low enough, this month) I’ll be not only covering the cost of the cushion I shat on, but covering as much of the cost as much as possible.

Don’t ever do this to a friend.

She called me a fucking asshole. I deserved it. Please don’t tell me I didn’t, to reassure me. I was being a fucking asshole. I ruined the only chair she could take in an ambulance. She can’t find her walker so she has to wall-walk to the bathroom if her powerchair is charging at night. That carries a huge fall risk – most of her spine is a metal rod, and the rest of it is two dislocated vertebrae. I hurt her in this way too. This is not self-flagellation, this is absolute reality. I hurt a friend who was only trying to be nice to me in a horrible situation.

She says I’m forgiven. But she’s poorer than I am and I know she’s still mad and she has every right to be absolutely pissed off at me for a long time to come. Meanwhile the only thing in my power to do is money, and I won’t have much of that till the 3rd when I get paid. But I’ll do everything I can to make this up to her. And if you ever do something like this to anyone – friend, acquaintance, enemy, whatever – apologize sincerely, quickly, and without weasel words, and then ask what you can do to help.

That’s a social skill I learned the hard way – if a good friend, like a really good friend especially, starts screaming at you and cussing you out, you shouldn’t make it all about you. Ask “What’s wrong?” And ask “What, if anything, can I do to help?” If nothing is available that you can do to help, give them a standing offer that if in the future they know what you can do, you will do it. And that’s all you can do. Don’t demand forgiveness, it’s not your place. If you are forgiven, that is entirely the choice of the wronged party. Which is not you, even if they scream obscenities at you or have a meltdown. T

hey are the wronged party, treat them as such. They have a right to be angry and to behave like an angry person, including towards you. If their anger upsets you, take care of that away from them, don’t burden them with your emotional reactions to justified anger. I used to cry every time something like this happened, then she’d have to comfort me, leading to more resentment that she was the wronged party and yet she was having to take care of me. Now if I cry I say “ignore my tears” or I suppress it until I get in private.

BTW, there is only one person in the world that I would allow to use my adaptive equipment if ze visited, and ze hasn’t visited yet. I also once let someone with a broken ankle use my wheelchair temporarily and with supervision by a caregiver so I could get it back within the five minutes it took to use it. These are not normal situations. If you want to ask for using a friend’s assistive tech:

Ask in a way where they can say no and you won’t act upset about it.
If you break it and they are upset, keep your own upset to yourself, don’t make them take care of your hurt feelings on top of their broken technology.
If you break or damage it, apologize and ask what you can do to help. Including pay for repairs in installments if necessary.
Before using the equipment, ask if there’s anything you ought to know about how to work it to avoid breaking it.
Before using the equipment, ask if it is partially broken already and if there are things you can do that would make it worse. (And then don’t do them).
Try not to yell back at them.
Try not to explain how it’s really not your fault because… (insert excuse here).
Make a genuine apology. Not “I’m sorry you feel that way,” which makes it sound like their feelings are the problem. If someone broke my communication devices, I would be doubly upset if someone thought my hurt feelings were worse than the fact that I couldn’t communicate in English anymore.
Do all these things, but don’t be a pest about it. Offer a few times if you have to, but let them make the ultimate decision, don’t make it about assuaging your own guilt feelings.
There’s more, but I have a headache, so I’m ending here.

If you do all those things, your friendship should survive this, no matter how many cuss words are screamed back and forth.