*Ten Ways To Diss a Differently Abled Person

1. Make sure to leave your empty shopping carts in the special needs parking space.  Hey, no one was using it anyway.

2. Always park in the special needs space and if that is not available park as close as you possibly can to it.

3. This is an especially good one.  If you have a wheelchair user in your family that you see regularly, don't even consider making entry into your home more accessible.  Because you really don't have the time to consider affordable ramps like this.

4. Ignore the wheelchair user in all conversations and only focus on communicating with their parent or the able bodied people around them.

5.  Don't bother buying the child with special needs anything but grey utility sweatpants and sweatshirts for gifts. After all, isn't that the best thing to dress a person with special needs in?

6. Ask a person who uses a voice output device a question but don't wait for the answer.  Just as they have completed their response after laborious motor planning, turn away and miss the whole thing. Do this several times so that your sincerity really shows.

7. Turn around and frown at the differently abled person when they are participating in community gatherings, because they are ruining your day.

8. Additionally, make sure to shoo your children away from the wheelchair user on the playground, because (loud whisper) what if it's catching?

9. Yell at a parent or caregiver of a wheelchair user for parking in the special needs parking space because clearly the caregiver can walk.  What right do they have to use that space....even if the wheelchair user is actually in the car with them (at the pharmacy picking up meds that the pharmacist was actually coming out of the store to give them)?  But still those spaces are for handicappers only.

10. Use the word "retard" in any context.

Note these top 10 are not in order of importance - they are all important.  Also this list is garnered from my own and my friends experiences. For all of those close relatives and close friends who have considered ramps and slowing their pace down and are just sensitive in general to their differently abled relative or friend, god bless you.  And please consider holding classes for the not so naturally compassionate.

*You'll have to forgive my sarcasm in this post. A situation similar to the 10 I have listed above just happened to us this same day.