Thread by @punkroselalonde

I think we've talked about this here before, but I don't think I have, and we left the house twice in the past week or two, so I'm thinking about it again.
The difference in how people treat you with a cane and how they treat you without one is shocking. We're getting used (1/?)

to the new treatment now, but it's still so different. The one time we rode the bus, it was a vastly different experience, even ignoring the changes due to COVID. In a thrift store, an elderly shopper was very apologetic for accidentally getting in our way. (2/?)

In Hot Topic, an employee moved a chair out of our way, and other shoppers were also much more apologetic/accommodating/polite than strangers tend to be.
In a Walmart, when we saw a visibly distressed, shivering, and alone dog wearing a service dog vest, who was trying (3/?)

very hard to get our attention, and sat with him to try to help him out until someone came back + sent our sibling off to go look for our parent, because I was just at a loss for what to do, and was really concerned about whoever he was supposed to be with, though he was (4/?)

acting off-duty, since he still had a vest on. People passing by assumed that he was ours. (For anyone else also concerned, Henry was the service dog of the late girlfriend of the man he was there with, and he was shivering because he'd come inside while it was raining. (5/?)

So, very reasonable explanation he was cold, and wasn't with whoever needed him.)
I also believe we've been semi-followed by employees in stores as of late, though not with ill intent. They just really want to help us and make sure we're finding everything okay so much (6/?)

more than they used to.
There's also been concerned looks when whoever we're with walks off someplace else (usually our sibling) and we stay, because we realized we needed a basket or buggy or something and didn't want to walk all the way over and back, and prefer to wait. (7/?)

On the topic of the bus - The driver asked if we wanted the bus lowered when we were getting off, and began to lower it before we could automatically respond with "No, it's fine" from the "don't be an inconvenience" instincts.
It's not necessarily *bad* that people are (8/?)

being more accomodating of us now, just.. new. We've always had invisible disabilities most of the time, aside from when we can't suppress tics or fully mask, which is terrifying, but doing it is so uncomfortable and exhausting, so that's a different situation, or (9/?)

sometimes for the few moments it takes to get out and use our inhaler before putting it away again, but no one actually treats asthma like the physical disability it is.
There are a lot of other things/places I'm honestly almost excited to do/go, just out of curiosity (10/?)

about what ways people will treat us differently now.
The soonest one is sometime this month, I forget exactly when. We're going to finally get vaccinated for COVID. Of course, the majority of people there will also be disabled, which is also pretty interesting to (11/?)

think about - We've never actually been in a space with primarily only disabled people present before. But, that factor might mean less of the aggressively accomodating behavior than we generally get in public now, at least from other patients/patrons/etc. Employees, (12/?)

though, I suspect may still act roughly the same way.
I guess my interest in this is probably some kind of psychology thing. I know @Manadis_Iris finds it interesting, too, and they're the one in our system with a reputation for literally taking notes on headmates' (13/?)

behaviors, tone, body language, moods, motivations, etc, and also likes to do a lot on Fear alignment and classpect/sway, the connections between them, and assigning them to people, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's something similar.
Ramble over, I think. (14/14?)

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