One day I was walking out of a building into a parking lot. There was a girl my age with me who I just met. She was in a wheelchair since birth.
So I hold the building door for her and she wheels herself through and thanks me.
My car is on the other side of the parking lot from her car. We say our goodbyes and she starts to wheel herself away.
At this moment I am conflicted.
There are handlebars on her wheelchair. Do I offer to wheel her to her car or do I just walk away and go to my car?
If I offer to wheel her over to her car, it can either be taken as a gesture of kindness as in I'm trying to do something nice for her or it can be taken as rude because I may be doubting her ability to wheel herself.
Obviously she has experience in a wheelchair and could easily have wheeled herself so I felt in the moment that offering to push her wheelchair to her car would be seen as rude. I did not want to see her as a crippled individual in my eyes and I wanted to see her just as I see any other person. I didn't want to baby her or see her less capable of mobility despite her being in a wheelchair so in the moment I just left.
I don't know if I should have offered to wheel her over or if I should have just walked away as I did. I couldn't tell if there was a mutual respect between us for me not offering to wheel her or if there was me being cold and her perceiving me to be cold.
Either way though it's over. I realize I don't know many people with wheelchairs and in the moment, I just didn't know what to do. What should people do in situations like these?
Okay here's another incident I face quite often. Living in communal bathrooms, all the boys share toilets.
If, for whatever reason, there is piss all over the toilet seat as I enter the stall, but I only need to piss, then I usually piss and then just walk out, leaving the mess on the seat just as I left it.
Then, if someone else comes into the stall just as I leave and they see me leave, they look into the stall and see all the piss on the seat. They think it's me who did that.
They think it's my piss because all they see is me walking out and piss being on the seat. It is the simplest conclusion to make.
While some of the piss may be mine, as I just pissed in the stall and nobody's aim is perfect, some of it is not; someone was there before and made the mess that I saw walking in.
If that person has to do more than piss, they need to clean up the piss that they believe I left, which is a bad situation for them.
Now usually I don't care if people think I'm gross or whatever but like it's just sort of mean to leave someone to clean up piss.
Am I supposed to clean up the piss that was there before me that wasn't mine? I'd say no. Why should I be obligated to clean up a mess I didn't make. It may be the decent thing to do, but people aren't under obligation to be decent. They are under obligation not to be indecent to others, but that doesn't mean they need to be decent.
Obviously I'm not gonna stop the person walking into the stall and have a full on conversation with them that the piss is not mine and that I saw it walking in and that I am not intentionally leaving a mess for them to clean up or even add to if they need to piss too.