TL;DR: Not even close. I once watched a police officer drag his foot across a sidewalk and felt an instant kinship, so I stopped him to say his limp gave me courage. He turned to me with the kindest eyes and explained he’d just stepped in dog poop and was trying to get it off his shoe.
I was at a speaking engagement one day when I saw a police officer dragging his foot across the sidewalk, just like me. Instantly I felt better. I wasn’t so alone in my hardship. Here was a man doing brave, hard work with a limp like mine, and I had to say something.
So I stopped him. I said, my name is Kelsey Tainsh, and I have a limp like yours from a stroke I had as a kid, and seeing you do the bravest job there is with a limp, well, you’ve given me great courage. Because if you can do that work like this, so can I.
He turned to me with the kindest, sweetest eyes I have ever seen. And he said: young lady, I just stepped in dog poop. I was trying to get it off my shoe.
I had written an entire story onto that man — his struggle, his courage, his kinship with me — and he was scraping poop off a loafer. For years I’d hidden my own hand in my sweatshirt pocket so nobody would write a story onto me. And there I was doing it to a stranger, at full volume, in the middle of the sidewalk.
I’ve spent years since as a corporate keynote speaker telling that story, and it always gets the laugh — and then the quiet right after. Because everyone in the room has done it. We look at a person’s difference and we fill in the meaning, and we are usually wrong.
It was when I finally took my hand out of my pocket that I began to understand who I was, even before I had a stroke—and especially after.
— I’m Not Limping. That’s Swagger!, Chapter 1
I don’t know that man’s name. He taught me more than most people whose names I have.
When you catch yourself reading someone’s difference
- Notice the story you’ve written before you speak it.
- Ask the person instead of assuming the meaning.
- Let people be more than the thing you noticed first.
The dog poop cop is my most-requested story as a corporate keynote speaker, because it lets a room laugh at the assumptions we all make about difference before we talk about them seriously. If your team is working on how it sees people, I’d love to bring it to your stage. You can read the full story in my book as well.
Book: https://kelseytainsh.com/kelseys-book/ · Speaking: https://kelseytainsh.com/corporate-keynotes/
Quote Q07 pulled from Chapter 1. Confirm against print edition before publishing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are first impressions about disability often wrong?
Because people naturally fill in missing information with a story. A limp, unusual movement, speech difference, or visible disability may trigger assumptions about someone’s health, ability, or experience that the person never actually told us. Noticing something is human; deciding what it means without evidence is where the mistake begins.
How can assumptions about disability affect inclusion at work?
Assumptions can reduce a person to the first difference someone notices. That can shape expectations, opportunities, and even the way coworkers speak to them before anyone has learned what the person actually needs or can do. Inclusion improves when curiosity replaces automatic interpretation.
What’s a better way to respond when you notice someone’s physical difference?
Avoid assigning a backstory to it. If the difference is relevant and a conversation is appropriate, ask respectfully rather than guessing; if it is not relevant, let the person be more than the characteristic you happened to notice first. The simplest correction to an assumption is often to stop treating it as a fact.
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