Quote:
Originally Posted by God-Speed
Jarblue, I would like to talk to you about the volunteer program. As far as this guy goes, he was a younger man in his later twenties and in my option was fine as he walked in talking on his phone and ignore what I said about his parking.
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You have PM
Again, visual judgement is impossible to tell with some disabilities. The perception of the general public is you're not disabled unless you're old or crippled. However, you might see my 22 year old brother-in-law pull into an accessible space (with his placard) and literally run at a sprint into a store, and you'd be thinking WTF. But what you don't know is that his auto-immune disease, in addition to giving him severe rheumatoid arthritis at age 14 along with a host of other symptoms that affect his day-to-day living, has so severely affected his GI tract that he is running for the bathroom. He is hoping to graduate from college in the spring and walk the stage with his class, but he is currently fighting the possibility he might have to have an ileostomy bag (like a colostomy bag but in a different location) meaning he'll have to drop his classes to have the surgery and wait until summer or fall to finish. It's unbelievable the things he has to deal with every day, and while he does bitch and moan like every human being, he has an incredibly positive overall attitude about his illness. It's something to admire for sure.
Now this is a fairly extreme and uncommon example, and he only uses the accessible parking on campus and when he is feeling particularly poor. But there are plenty of people that may not look disabled yet have a perfectly legitimate reason for using the accessible parking. There are also some mental disabilities that you can't tell just by looking. I'll admit my perception has changed since joining the program - as long as they have a valid plate or placard, they get the benefit of the doubt.