“Just stick a sign around my neck that says ‘cerebral palsy child: health and safety risk”

I think I was seven years old when I said this. I could make out that it was a big moment of realisation or that it was some sort of way of taking back control of my own narrative, but it wasn’t. In the head of my seven-year-old self, it was a very practical solution to the problem of my wheelchair posing a health and safety risk that the people around me kept going on about. If I had a sign to warn other people, then there wouldn’t be an issue. It’s safe to say that my suggestion was met with awkward silence and nobody talked about health and safety around me in quite the same way again, but it’s a moment I always return to in my head…