I roll up itching to play ball and instead I watch. Foiled again! I want to be playing ball like everyone else, all the kids I hang out with. As a teenager I’ve long ago outgrown interest in climbing playgrounds even if I could climb up.

As a wheelchair user I know that we separate not in the classroom but in the playgrounds - especially the ball fields. They put in a great many basketball courts, tennis courts, baseball, soccer and other games and sports fields for all the jocks and athletes. So some few athletes get all the attention and all their running sports that exclude me and I get nothing!

How can accessibility not make matters worse for the wheelchair would-be-players, for the differently-abled, for the cognitively and physically challenged? The ramps do not lead to inclusion but to our own immediate elimination- to banishment to the sidelines even before a ball is tossed. Why even show up? When was the last time you saw a kid in a wheelchair even show up with his friends at a sport intended for the participation of everyone else?

The special populations now have greater accessibility to total frustration. They can now roll on up to the perimeter to experience exclusion with ever greater irony than before the ramps were built. How can we be included in the pick- up games of conventional sports? Do I bring along 10 wheelchairs so I can get a game with average kids my age? Where are the sports like Bankshot which allow all players to participate?