By: Michael Gigandet

“I hope you are able-challenged!” A man rattled the door of the bathroom stall. “I don’t see a wheelchair under the door!”

Obviously he means me, Martin thought. There’s only one handicapped stall in here, and I’m in it.

“I can see you’re standing!” The man shouted it like an accusation.

“The other stall was occupied…” Martin began to explain. It had been when he walked into the restaurant’s restroom, the urinal too, but he couldn’t wait.

“We don’t go around using your stalls!” The man wasn’t going to listen.

“Just a minute,” Martin said. “Sorry. I’ll be right out.”

“Handicapped stalls are for able-challenged people!” the man announced. Martin flushed, zipped and turned all in one sweeping movement. When he opened the door an obese man in a wheelchair charged forward without making eye contact. Martin slipped sideways to avoid the wheels of his chair.

The man wheeled himself around in the stall, banging into the door and walls, unnecessarily so, Martin thought. The door slammed shut, and Martin began washing his hands.

“Hey Rico,” the man said, evidently using his phone while he took care of business. “I’m back…Some jerk was using the handicapped stall.”

His listener apparently sympathized.

“Yeah, some people.”

Martin dried his hands. He always treated the people he met with courtesy, and he felt like he’d been rude. “Able-challenged?”. The clunkiness of the phrase alone had to violate some principle of effective English speaking.

“Hey you,” the man in the stall snarled. “There’s no toilet paper.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Throw me some toilet paper!”

Martin looked at the stack of tissue rolls on the end of the counter.

Is courtesy even a value anymore in a culture where the Lowest Common Denominator is the ideal? Why should one person be more courteous than another?

He could ignore the man and walk out or make the man say: “Say please.” The guy could use a lesson in manners.

“Hurry up!” the man commanded.

Martin hesitated.

Some people might not help the man, and Martin couldn’t blame them. But, if he did anything other than help wouldn’t he be conforming to their world?

Don’t let them win. Make an act of courtesy an act of defiance.

He picked up a roll of paper and rolled it like a bowling ball under the door, watching the man’s hands fumble and grasp it.

The man did not say ‘Thanks’, and Martin walked out the door.

 I am not like them; I am different.

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Michael Gigandet is a retired lawyer in Tennessee. His stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Quarencia Press, Great Weather for Media, Palm Sized Press, Syncopation Literary Journal and The Hong Kong Literary Journal. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize this year.