Handicapped

So I went to this party tonight.. a celebration of this fine (questionable, that..) young man's 21st birthday at this bar across my apartment complex. It was an alright night, interspersed with a decent amount of C2H5OH and filled with people that I had no idea about. See, this fine young fella happens to be a good few years down the pecking order in medical school terms, so most of the "kids" there had a good number of semesters left until they reached their aspirations of becoming life saving physicians.

A friend of mine and I represented our class with a few others, and we had a good enough time except for the adulation you recieve on a night out on account of being a "final" Med. Now that's something I can do without. The only thing I've achieved is being a part of the graduating class of our medical school, and that is something that comes to many with time. When I'm a doctor and I've actually contributed to society, then come to me to gawk and gaze. Right now, just leave me alone. Even if you do happen to be a confused 17 year old in need of a person to look up to, trust me.. there are many better role models out there.

But I digress. The point of this post was to discuss the handicapped bathroom facilities. See, this is a nice bar that we went to, and (as a lot of venues do) it has its facilities positioned down a few flights of stairs in the basement. On the ground floor is the handicapped toilet- for obvious reasons- and it did indeed pose a tempting propostion for me tonight. What? not have to go downstairs to relieve my bladder? I'm in!

So I walked in and as many of you may have witnessed in many handicapped facilities, there was the usually array of handles and bars for those of us less fortunate to be able to hold on to when having to negotiate their way on to the toilet seat.

One thing that WAS missing, however, was adequate reflective surfaces. Sure, the toilet paper holder was chrome and so was the liquid soap dispenser, but there was no mirror. It made me think about whoever put this place together. Did they think that maybe the disabled among us had no need for one? Surely a long mirror could've been placed somewhere to accomodate those in a wheelchair and those who aren't?