Story

The young woman wearily pulls her Jeep into the Handicapped space at the restaurant and puts the engine in park. She takes her shiny new blue plastic handicapped placard and hangs it from her mirror, then opens her door. She slowly gets out of the truck, and with great care so that no one notices her limp, opens the back door and gently takes out the infant carrier. She walks carefully, so as not to limp, and keeps her head down, looking at her infant son, so no one sees the pain lines etched on her face.


With every step she takes, the pain radiates from her foot to her knees, making walking very difficult, but she doesn't let it show. She's a proud veteran of her country's military service, and doesn't show that she's in pain. Much less let on that the pain she suffers every day comes from her time in the military. It's not time for that. So, for now, she settles for just being a proud military wife, and supporting her husband, and not letting on to many that she also defended her country and is now permenantly disabled and unable to hold a job other than wife and mother.

Now, she slowly carries her infant son into the restaurant for her doctor-ordered rest stop on their trip to her parents' house, less than two hours drive from where they live. Her doctors say that she's not allowed to drive for more than 45 minutes at a time.  She has problems with her feet that were caused by the ill-fitting shoes she had while in her basic training and has had problems with her knees that were aggravated by her service. She's learned the hard way not to ignore this directive. She decided once to drive straight through, and when she got there, she couldn't get out of the truck. Not a great feeling for a young woman of twenty years. She sat there and cried with her son. Cried, because while she should be in the prime of her life, here she was, crippled practically, with a baby to raise, and mourning the life she would never have with him. The doctors say that with physical therapy and surgery that there's a good chance that she'll have a normal life, but there's a chance with the surgery on her feet, that it will correct the cosmetic problems, but will cause the pain to be worse, so she has decided to not have the surgery at this point in time.

When they pulled into the parking space, there were two elderly ladies enjoying a cup of coffee at a window table next to the parking lot who watched her pull in, and watched her get her son out. She thought nothing of them as she and her son had their snack and her coffee. It wasn't until she went back out to her vehicle, and saw a napkin tucked under the windshield wiper with the message written on it "You don't look very handicapped to ME" that she thought anything of it. Now, see, she had struggled for months with the idea of getting her placard. Her doctors had said she really needed it, because, especially with carrying the baby, it was difficult for her to walk. The issues with her feet and her knees, those were just the beginning of her medical problems. She also had asthma, and some other medical problems that made mobility difficult, but weren't OBVIOUS. She didn't use crutches, she didn't use oxygen, and she wasn't in a wheelchair, but she certainly did suffer great pain much of the time.  She cartainly hadn't LIED to get the placard. That simple note on a napkin hurt her feelings. Because she had ended up in this condition defending people like that. So they could sneer at her, and basically call her a lazy so and so, and insult her. She had given up her quality of life, so that people like that didn't have to.

You know what? For the first time since she had raised her hand and said "I, Dianna Lynn Stephens, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God" in front of the flag of the United States of America and her grandfather, was actually sorry that she had. Because for the first time since she had, she actually felt that there were some people in this country who didn't deserve it.