It used to be that using a wheelchair, a walker or scooter was "at your own risk" when it came to getting across the street, or getting from street to sidewalk. Often the only way to do this was, well, you could risk going down or up a driveway, or you could jump the curb.

It seems impossible to remember that now. I'm so accustomed to curb cuts or "curb ramps" as I've seen them called, that at least as long as I've been dealing with my own disability, I've made it without a real problem. Plenty of small problems, don't misunderstand. Stu and I, for example, live a block from one of Seattle's major thoroughfares. And yet, to get several blocks south to a market, or several blocks north to a restaurant, requires me to take side streets and often to travel halfway up a street to go down a driveway. That's right, no magic poof again. ADA did not create the curb cut fairy to ensure that every block was crossable. In fact, I live on a corner, and the closest curb cut is a block away. It's there because I applied to the city to put it there. I was optimistic that it would be enough. Driveways in my city are not fun to navigate as there is a huge lip to go over in most cases. Hurts.

New construction seems to come with new pavement and new curb cuts. Otherwise, a tough time in the finances of a city can mean that curb cuts do not appear (and no city that I know of is just happily burbling along, putting in curb cuts everywhere. There were plenty of streets in Berkeley when I lived there that did not provide this essential accommodation. At the time that I requested the cuts at Linden and 86th, I believe it took me between five and seven tries to find the right city department where I could put in for these curb cuts.

But curb cuts, like automatic doors, serve hundreds of us. First and foremost, yes, physically disabled people who use walkers, crutches, scooters and wheelchairs need them. As someone who's navigated the outside world at one point using every one of these assistive devices, lemme tell ya. Curbs are a bitch. Think too about the parents with strollers. Think about this the next time you are at a crosswalk, standing in the curb cut. Many of you benefits from them, don't get me wrong. We have bad hips, bad knees, and as we age, it's nice to be easy on your body. But keep this in mind. Often, you have an option. You can step off the curb. I can't. I have only one way to get from hither to thither, pillar to post. Every day, on my travels to see Stu, i end up in a curb cut. Often, some twenty-something in stilettos is standing in it, waiting to cross. Yeah, sure, wearing those things may mean she needs the curb cut at some point. I need it now. And if the curb cut serves both sides of the corner, she may be standing in it blocking my access when I am trying to cross with the light.

People don't mean to block my way, I know that. But explain to me please why so many people stand there and stare as I try to go up the curb cut as I cross the street. Stand there and stare at me coming toward them. Like this is the most fascinating thing that they've ever seen. Right. I get so so so so very tired of "excuse me". I get so very sick of "could you please move". I get so worn out being polite. At no time has anyone seemed to be deliberately obstructive. At the end of the day, that fact doesn't help.

Here, however, are some cool things to think about when you see a curb cut. I have no idea what they are like in other countries, or even in most parts of the US. In my part of Seattle, though, it's like a mini-historlcal survey on the life and times of the wheelchair curb cut. There are so many different kinds it is mind-blowing. I've said more than once that were i ever to go back to school for another degree, I'd be tempted to find a field wherein I could write a thesis on this very topic: how to figure out the age of a neighborhood, redevelopment, city planning, by the nature of the curb cuts. Imagine the photo essay. (Complete with a little troll who lives beside the curb cut. No wait, cut that out. That's a different project.)

Curb cuts differ in so many ways. The placement of the ramp. Several feet from the corner? On the corner? The width. Just wide enough for a standard manual chair? Wider? With "wings"?

What about the angle? The older cuts in north Seattle where I am have a tendency to bottom out and have broken pavement, making going down the thing a bit more of an adventure than I'd like. There's one a few blocks away is a total mess, covered in dead wet leaves because the nearby storm sewer backed up in bad weather and no one has cleared the leaves away. It's impossible for me to fix that, and in that situation, I use the nearby driveway. I don't like it when I can't see the surface I'm on.

Okay, how about texture? You've noticed that, right? Some curb cuts in my neck of the city have diamond or diagonal scoring in the concrete that makes up the curb cut. Some have some sort of artificial (plastic/vinyl/stuff) knobby stuff on the concrete. Some of it is white, some yellow. Some of it is broken.

There are, it seems, at least seven different iterations of curb cut in the neighborhoods where i live and travel to in Seattle. I have never read up on the requirements and the suggestions that cause City Planners to stop doing it this way and start doing it anew. One of the best changes came early on, when they stopped putting the curb cut several feet from the corner. This placement resulted in a lot of us going out into the traffic, often blocked by a car that was sitting there, waiting to go. Often the grade was steep and it was difficult to find a way to get from that spot several feet away into the safety of a crosswalk. The color and texture changes are, as i understand, in part to assist those with low or impaired vision: it's hell to be taken by surprise when all of a sudden the pavement slopes and you don't know why.

So that's my take, at least for the moment, on "My Friend, The Curb Cut". Please treat them nice. Curb cuts are your friends. And if they're not, let's figure out why not and make them work better. Meanwhile, if you don't gotta, please don't stand in the curb cut.

Thank you and good night. Don't forget to tip your waitress.