An Oklahoma family isn’t letting the stranger who posted a rude, hurtful note on their car about the father’s disability get the best of them.
On Oct. 10, the Stribels and their daughter returned to their vehicle after eating at a local Olive Garden when they noticed a yellow note on the car’s window that read:
“Disabled? No – Just your big fat a**es.”
“I was just angry because people… they don’t know me,” Dustry Stribel said to KFOR News about his disability.
He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a hereditary disease that weakens the body’s muscles over time, as a child. Two years ago, Stribel had to be confined to a wheelchair because of his condition.
“For someone to say something like that, it hurt,” Kionna, Stribel’s wife, added.
But what hurt the couple the most was the fact their daughter, Jaydin, 8, read the note before Kionna was able to take it down.
“She read it pretty quick before I had a chance to cover anything up and she didn’t understand. She said, ‘Mom, why would someone do that? They don’t even know us,’” Kionna said to KFOR.
In fact, it affected their daughter so much she went home and drew the event on the sidewalk with chalk. The image includes her mom frowning and the stranger laughing.
“Some people are hateful and they don’t know us and they just make assumptions,” Stribel said to KFOR. “I’m not in a wheelchair because I want to be.”
Kionna posted a note on her Facebook page to the person who left the message, which reads in part, “I’d like to say thank you! Your misguided and uninformed attempt to shame me and my family provided an opportunity to teach my eight-year-old daughter a lesson… a little girl who’s daddy will never get to walk her down the aisle, because, he is in fact disabled.”
Kionna is hoping it’s shared so many times that the person who left the note will see her message.
“I’d kind of like to explain to them that we aren’t just fat, lazy people that park in the handicap because we’re too lazy to park three spots away,” Kionna said.
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