Thursday, September 29, 2005

GOING AROUND AGAIN


I know this is shameless, but I’m actually reposting.

See, when I originally wrote this, in November 2005, Blogger didn’t offer cheap bastards such as myself, who don’t pay anything for the privilege of blogging, the ability to post pictures with words. Now it does.

Once again, then, with color art:

At the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, I used a bathroom stall intended for the disabled. Like all such stalls, it was spacious, so someone in a wheelchair could roll in and shift himself onto the toilet. There was something a little odd about it, too: The toilet paper dispenser was on the wall far to the right of the toilet, which was on the left of the stall, and getting to it would require a ridiculously long stretch, one almost certainly overextending and unbalancing the person stretching. That’s silly, I thought, why make it so far away? Oh right, I realized, the wheelchair goes in that great space. Right! That’s where the wheelchair goes — between the toilet and the toilet paper dispenser, at exactly the height where the seat, arms and possibly motor get in the way of the effort. Brilliant. Has this stall ever been used by someone in a wheelchair? I’ll bet it wasn’t designed by someone in a wheelchair.

4 comments:

Indri said...

You wrote this in November, 2005? Really?

Excellent point, though. I have the ADA compliant apartment in my building, and I just realized that although I have low lightswitches, no thresholds, and grab bars in the bathroom... there are no grab bars in the tub, and the counters are too high. Half-assed, to be sure.

hillary said...

I would love to know what the person whose foot appears in the stall next door was thinking, hearing your camera clicking away in there...

I also can't help but think how this post could have been combined with the, um, art project you proposed a few posts ago.

Scape7 said...

Okay, perhaps the post was written in 2004. You know, it's not easy writing two whole new sentences to introduce barely repurposed material. Try it sometimes: You fall prey to overconfidence.

bwana said...

It may have been designed by a masochist in a wheelchair.