Hugh Grant has a famous rant about the unbearability of slow walkers. From road-raging speed demons to travelers rushing to board airplanes, most of us recognize the simmering irritation that comes from being slowed down by someone else. Impatience is still a socially acceptable emotion and we laugh at Hugh Grant’s outrage because we get it. It’s funny because it’s true.
I myself used to zip through malls and airports, dodging toddlers and grannies, rolling my eyes at anyone who got in my way. I was an expert at navigating crowded subway stations, spotting openings, always ten steps ahead, like I was in some kind of video game. Wherever I was in the world felt like space that belonged to me. Even if, technically, it was shared, it didn’t feel like we all had the same right to be there.
Our culture values productivity and efficiency, words synonymous with speed. We wear our impatience like a sign telling the world that we are one of the good guys – busy, in demand, super effing important. We’ve got places to be.
Meanwhile, slow is something we associate with words like lazy. Stupid. Selfish. Someone who has their head in the clouds. Slow is self-indulgent. Those sloth-like dawdling lookie-loos who stop to smell the roses deserve to be met with ridicule and rage.
And then one day, I was forced to get out of the fast lane. Well, not one day, but gradually, as my MS progressed. When I started having trouble with my gait and balance I left my crew of slow-haters behind and became one of the hated.
Thanks to a combination of weakness and spasticity, it takes me a full four minutes just to put on shoes. On a good day, it takes me eleven seconds to walk 25 feet. I know this because the Timed 25 Foot Walk Test is a quaint if archaic diagnostic that’s still used to assess disability progression in MS. Eleven seconds doesn’t sound like much until you’re stuck behind me at the mall. And eleven seconds feels excruciating to me when all eyes are on my (lack of) progress.
As frustrating as my pace is for me, I am hyper-aware of how frustrating it is for the Hugh Grants of the world. Friends, family, even strangers see my slowness and often try to “correct” it.
More than one Uber driver has tried to hurry me into the back of a car by lifting my legs without asking, even as I’m being charged Wait Fees for the time it takes to put my mobility aid in the trunk. Once, while slow-walking through a hallway, some dude asked if I needed a push. I thought he was joking because I was in a hospital using a rollator, and not in a park on a swing, but then I felt his hand on my back, urging me forward. Like I just needed some encouragement.
At least once a week, someone clocks me moving slowly (usually towards the elevator they’re holding), and tells me to “take your time”. Often it’s said through gritted teeth which has the effect of making “take your time” sound more like “hurry up”.
Even when “take your time” is meant to make me feel better, the gesture implies that time wasn’t mine to take in the first place. Tolerance, after all, suggests that I am something to be tolerated.
I know that people are mostly trying to be nice, or at least fill the awkward elevator silence, but I feel like my body is constantly being observed, watched and commented on and why can’t you just stare at your phone and pretend not to notice me like you would do with everyone else?
Living in the MS Time Zone means that while everyone is waiting for me, I am waiting for me too. But I can’t help that I move slowly and I’m not convinced I should feel bad about it. While the world tries to hurry me up (don’t bother, I have never lost a game of Sidewalk Chicken), I’m not trying to slow anyone down. If you want to live in the fast lane, that’s cool. You do you.
Maybe what people really mean when they complain about slow walkers is that they resent having to yield to bodies they deem inferior. When speed functions as a moral demand, taking up time becomes of measure of taking up space. Presence can feel like a social transgression when simply showing up becomes and act of insistence, of resistance.
As we stand (or sit) on the edge of a new year, collectively counting seconds and watching clocks, promising ourselves we’ll do more and faster next year, maybe this is a moment to question what exactly we’re rushing toward. Impatience is a choice. We can decide that there’s room for all of us, and at every pace.
Happy New Year, Trippers
The post The Real Reason Slow Walkers Make Us So Angry appeared first on Tripping On Air.
Source: trippingonair.com