Let’s talk about how people treat you when you have an invisible illness. More specifically, let’s talk about how people treat you when you roll up with a handicapped parking permit hanging from your rearview mirror.

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What happens in these situations? Usually, nothing. Yet sometimes – and all it takes is one time to turn your stomach - people make cruel, stupid, and small-minded assumptions about your health and about whether you “deserve” to use a handicapped parking spot, and they don’t hesitate to share those opinions with you. Usually in a righteous, accusatory tone dripping with cruelty and disdain.

I’m intimately familiar with what “invisible” illnesses look like. My wife Hive account@alladesria suffers from several of them; on days when she’s in very bad pain she might use her cane, but most days, you can’t tell just from looking at her that she has these illnesses - she doesn’t look sick. Well, whatever “looking sick” means, anyway.

Yet this hasn’t stopped people from making judgmental assumptions about her. In fact, it happened a few days ago. Someone took one look at Hive account@alladesria, decided they didn’t fit their specific definition of “disabled”, and accused her of not deserving to have access to a handicapped parking spot.

The three of us – me, my wife, and our daughter Ellie – had been running errands and had decided to get something to eat at our local Burger King. We pulled up in one of the handicapped-accessible spots, directly across from an older woman wearing a Burger King uniform that seemed to be changing the garbage in a nearby bin. I got out of the car to retrieve our daughter while my wife slipped out her still-new parking tag, leaving it hanging prominently from the rear-view mirror.

Hive account@alladesria began extricating herself, slowly and carefully, from the passenger seat as I was untangling Ellie from the dozens of straps and snaps that kept her firmly attached to her car seat. My wife moves pretty damn slowly sometimes due to the many physical issues she suffers from; again, though, most of the time you can’t tell just from looking at her.
Apparently the worker changing the garbage out thought otherwise. She said “you look fine” to my wife. Unfortunately, Hive account@alladesria is has 90% hearing loss in both ears; with her hearing aids are currently under repair she’s functionally deaf so she didn’t know the woman had said anything.

I got my wife’s attention – still holding the hand of my not yet quite 5-year-old daughter, mind you – and communicated to her what the woman said. She was shocked, immediately thinking the woman had been accusing her of not needing a handicapped parking permit because, well, she didn’t “look” disabled.

I wanted to give the woman the benefit of the doubt, but I had heard her loud and clear. I made it a point to politely ask the woman what she meant, but she simply repeated “she’s fine,” while gesturing between my wife and the parking spot. I asked her if she was serious or if she was joking, but again the woman would just repeat “she’s fine” or “she looks fine.” Every time she did so, my wife – who was now reading the woman’s lips – would get increasingly upset.

Things were beginning to spiral out of control. Hive account@alladesria was distraught at the accusation, my daughter was growing confused and agitated because her mother was so upset, and the Burger King employee was becoming increasingly emphatic with her exhortations of “but she looks fine!” Finally I managed to get both my wife and daughter inside, away from the angry voice of the woman behind us. To their credit, the staff behind the counter immediately asked us what’s wrong; I explained – while trying to calm both Hive account@alladesria and Ellie down – that one of their workers had strongly implied, repeatedly, that my wife was undeserving of the privilege of handicapped parking.

Long story short, the employee in question was pulled into the back office and given a pretty severe talking to, according to the restaurant’s manager, who apologized to us profusely for her employee’s behavior. They also comp’d our meal, though my wife was still upset to eat anything. Somehow they anticipated that as well, including a to-go bag with our order without asking.

As horrible as the experience was for my wife, it could have been worse - most of the time, those with invisible illnesses that are confronted by people like that are too mortified to fight back. As a result they’re often chased off from wherever they are because of the cruelty of others. If Hive account@alladesria had been alone she almost certainly would have fled, even more distraught than she had been.

So what’s the moral of the story? “Don’t eat at Burger King” comes to mind, though that might be unfair - the manager and the rest of the workers there were sympathetic, compassionate, and quick to fix the situation. “Don’t let what other people say bother you” is another possible lesson, but that doesn’t seem particularly fair to my wife, as she wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Oh, I know! How about “don’t be a cruel, judgmental asshole?”

Yeah, I like that better.

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