Afunny thing happened on our way to the fancy soirée.
I'm dressed for an evening on the town with my girlfriend: white shirt, dark slacks and blue blazer. We're barely in the door and I've just got my laser-printed nametag on when we're met by someone with whom my partner interacts on a regular basis. I am introduced.
"What do you do?" the elegantly dressed lady asks. I tell her what I do and that I work at a distance from my employer in Quebec.
"Oh! Special dispensation because of your disability?" she inquires and smiles indulgently. As if my disability, by definition, requires accommodation.
A fine how-do-you-do, I think, and try to keep a look of shock from my face by smiling brightly. I stammer a little and shake my head, in answer to her question. In the not-too-far distance, waiters dressed in black wander the room with glasses of wine balanced on trays while an eight-piece ensemble provides background music nearby.
I had experienced a good 9-to-5 job in la belle province, doing what I loved to do, with good people and good pay. Full-time. Walking the halls with a pronounced limp and talking with a sometimes-sibilant stutter, sitting at my desk, doing my job, keeping up with deadlines, joking with colleagues and going for coffee at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., five days a week, 7-point-whatever hours a day.
Although I hardly used them, I had sick days and medical benefits, too. After being told so often that I couldn't compete with "the rest" - here I was, hardly competing, but relating successfully to those around me in the pursuit of personal, professional and organizational goals. Succeeding at it quite nicely too, thank you, and en français.
So I walked into that expensive room full of strangers the other night feeling like a million bucks, carrying myself with a confidence I'd never felt before. And no special dispensation could ruin that.
But it did bring me back to reality: At first glance, people's expectations of me are different, and at the very worst, lower than they are for others.
The disability movement has, quite correctly, spent years trying to get the message out that we (people with disabilities) are capable of doing a vast majority of the things that you (who don't have disabilities) can do - the difference being that our paths toward the same result may be different.
To me, "special dispensation" implies the receipt from my employer of an exemption from the performance of a necessary duty because of physical limitations I may experience as a result of my cerebral palsy.
Not my case at all. After committing myself to my job for three years, I decided it was time to commit to what had, by that point, been an 18-month long-distance relationship with my soirée sweetheart. I figured I couldn't expect a further commitment from my employer just because I'd fallen in love.
So I submitted a letter of resignation to the boss, who smiled and congratulated me.
"Did you think we would let you go that easily?" he said.
Doesn't sound like an exemption to me.
E-mail, VoIP technology, high-speed Internet, video-conferencing, instant messaging, toll-free lines: These are not accommodations, these are everyday tools that could be used by any professional, on any given day, anywhere.
My boss still expects the same things of me as a professional writer in Ontario as he did when I sat across the hall from him in Quebec.
The how of it doesn't matter. Neither do the why, the where or the when, so long as the work gets done on time. The value my employer sees in the work I produce doesn't change, nor does the quality of my work suffer, at a distance.
I'm still checking dictionaries, still tweaking words and phrases here and there for my usual gang of collaborators, as I would be if I'd decided to forgo the chance at entering a new and exciting stage in my life.
The day I left Quebec to come back to Ontario, one of those co-workers came to the empty, echoing apartment where I'd spent three winters. He gave me the licence plate off his old car ( Je me souviens - I'll never forget that) as a souvenir. He loaded my bags into the trunk of his new car and loaded me into the front seat for a too-short drive to the airport. He waited with me while I checked in and then seven more co-workers strolled into the terminal to say adieu, including the aforementioned boss.
For an hour, I sat surrounded on all sides and said little while one thought cycled through my head repeatedly: My first day in Quebec, I knew one person.
The colleagues surrounding me at my point of departure had greeted a stranger without hesitation, as a professional. They had shaken my hand, shown me to my desk, given me a network username and password, and let me get to work.
Finally, my flight was called to board. I hugged these colleagues, these friends, and shook their hands. "Keep checking your e-mail. We need all our work done yesterday, okay?"
Does such an arrangement merit the designation of special dispensation? Not if you look at it from my perspective: I wasn't forced into a choice between making a relationship or making the rent.
Call it a value-added situation, instead. I know I do.
Mark Lindenberg lives in Toronto.
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