Crowhugger -- one song at a time! Also, I'd want to talk to the kid in question, and ask his permission before I wrote a song based on his experiences.

In the meantime, just a bit ago, an online friend and fellow wheelchair user posted the following to her blog, making the point directly, and in prose, what I'm trying to make obliquely in song.

On Understanding

(Quote) You have to understand, they tell me. You have to understand.

I leave these interactions and the follow-up conversations feeling bad. Why am I so angry? I think. The person meant well. They just freaked out when they saw me. Anyone would.

But then it occurred to me: people are telling me to understand that my very presence is so monstrous as to be panic-inducing. I am supposed to understand that just by existing, I send people into paroxysms of fear. Surely I, with my freakish freakish use of a scary scary chair on wheels, should understand that.

I mean, you don't run into disabled people every day, after all. Folks just aren't used to us.

But there's the rub: you SHOULD run into disabled people very day. We are, after all, one quarter of the population. However; our medical, employment, economic, and transportation systems all conspire to keep disabled people off the streets and skyways -- and to confine us to our homes, institutions, treatment centers.

Panicking when you see me forcibly reminds me of how hard society has worked to keep people like me away from 'normie' eyes. I am transgressing, just by daring to go to work for a living. Or enjoy the zoo with my family. Or buy groceries. And that's hard to take. (Unquote)

(She's also a musician; I've invited her into this thread)