skankwitch666:

I can’t stand seeing someone park in a handicap spot and then search for the tag and then walk like nothings wrong. People are so lazy, like they’re scared to walk a few extra steps, especially when some one else could really use that spot because they’re in a wheelchair or…

Ugh. Two people I know who have disabled-parking permits here both need them, and unless you experienced their precise situation you may not know from a distance.

My mother’s shoulders are fucked, and have been for twenty years. She has a permit and uses it because she can get along just fine, but the instant she needs to push or carry anything back to her car more than a hundred yards it rips at her torn tendons and causes constant pain (a pain I’m just being introduced to as one of my shoulders begins to suffer the same…)

Another is a workmate who’s 6’6” tall, but with a back injury that doesn’t allow him to both bend and support his body weight at the same time. He must drive a car with a seat that’s at the same height as his arse when he’s standing in order to get in and out of his car. It’s a large, old four wheel drive that’s been keyed because he parks in disabled parking bays, and folk have judged him as a selfish git because of it.

In both cases the reason they have permits is not obvious because THE ABILITY TO PARK IN EASY ACCESS BAYS REMOVES THE OUTWARD SIGNS OF THEIR CONDITION. In other words, they’re both judged as not worthy of that parking because the parking is doing for them what it was designed to - allowing them to function without debilitating pain becoming so bad it’s outwardly obvious to someone who’s never experienced it.