Full time wheelchair users, broadly speaking, get used to being conspicuous in public. There’s no hiding the fact of having a disability when you’re out there on wheels, and there’s no avoiding the wide range of how people react to you, to the chair, to your disability.

It’s a very wide range indeed, from those who discretely pretend nothing is different, to the folks who feel obligated to tell you about the time they spent a month in a wheelchair with whatever injury or disease. Or ask you inappropriately why you use the chair. Or treat you in a patronizing way, such as the classic “Good for you for getting on with your life” pat on the shoulder. And so on.

Frankly, the general public has gotten pretty used to seeing people in chairs. It’s more common than ever, and has certainly gone through a sea change in my 37 years on wheels. But while people have generally acclimated to the visibility of people with disabilities in public settings of all kinds, it’s clear in observed behaviors that the same questions still rush into the collective psyche: “What in the world is that guy doing in that chair?! What’s wrong with his legs? Has he been ‘in’ it since childhood?” (The quotes are because I often get out of my chair; I’ve only been “in” it since I got out of bed this morning). “Might I need to help him somehow? Should I feel sorry for him? Admire him? Ignore him?”

It’s impossible not to feel at least a little self-conscious – if at least self-aware – that you, uh, stand out when you’re in public on wheels. This energetic thing is in the air, and the trick is to sort of just co-exist with it, and learn not to care about it. One knows that, without a doubt, there are going to be people out there who see you through a medical, if not a tragic, lens.

The fact that I’m riding the absolute state-of-the-art ultralight titanium/carbon fiber chair doesn’t seem to have much affect on all this. Once in a while a bicycle enthusiast will notice that I have Spinergy wheels (very impressive to serious bikers that some of their high tech gear has made its way to wheelchairs). To most everyone else, it seems that a wheelchair is a wheelchair. However different it looks, the mere fact of my needing one remains the undeniable and overriding influence on their thoughts and reactions.

I imagine this dynamic will be very different for an eLEGS user out in public. My bet is that the technology will trump all of it. Or most. The cool factor, and the sheer novelty and newness of it, will have such force that the questions will change to “How does that work?! Who invented this? How does he get into it? How far can he go with it? When can I have sex with him/her?!” And so on.

Eventually I’m sure they’ll get to, “Oh, by the way, why do you need a robotic exoskeleton?” But until eLEGS users become as ubiquitous and as commonly seen as wheelchair users are now, that question will be driven much lower down the list in favor of the sheer power of being an exoskeleton-driven walker.

Of course, there are introverts and there are extroverts. Those of us who do crazy stuff like get up on stage in front of hundreds of people to speak (lots of people seem to think it’s somewhat insane that I love doing it) have an internal skill set that lets us be OK with living the conspicuous public life of the wheeler. The introverts, by definition, don’t want to draw any undue attention to themselves, so have had a different kind of adjustment process to deal with.

With eLEGS, as my imagination goes, the extrovert will have a field day with robotic mobility, and the introvert will have an easier time of the adjustment because – as will be true in both cases – we’ll be walking with pride, reveling in being early adopters of way cool state-of-the-art technology, and just so darn relieved that the general tone of how we’re received in public will be less reflexively focused on defining us in tragic terms.

I’m willing to bet no one will say that I’m “exoskeleton-bound.”