James – What’s gotten easier over time?

The inability to walk is what people see, it’s really just the tip of the iceberg.  You know, a lot of the secondary issues that people don’t understand, there’s still a lot of attitudinal barriers, if you will.  You know, when I was first injured, everybody focused on the architectural barriers, you know, because 35 years ago, nothing was accessible.  You couldn’t go to a restaurant; you couldn’t get into a bathroom, and so forth, so everybody was like, “it’s architectural.” Over the many years, I’ve seen attitudes change a lot.  I mean, you see people in chairs out in the community all the time now.  And you don’t get the gawks and the stares like we used to get.  You know, it was like, “What is he doing out of the home today?”  People were like shocked to see you out in the community.  You know, we’d go out to a restaurant, and the waitress would ask my wife what I would want ordered, and it was like, “Hello, I have a voice, I have a brain.”  And, you don’t get that today, fortunately.  People are more open to looking at me as a peer, as opposed to some poor crippled guy there.