So, we like to celebrate our little milestones here at DCist. We know, it’s self-indulgent, but it makes us feel good to look back at the swath of D.C. miscellany we’ve cut in the internets over the past two years, and today you guys join us in our historical reverie. Just a few moments ago, we recorded our 30,000th comment, a dilly of a pickle left by frequent interlocuter WOV. The comment, WOV’s 107th, was left on Sunday’s Opinionist piece and reads as follows:

I have no idea what it’s like to be in a wheelchair and compelled to make all of these extra accomodations, planning, etc., to get around that.

However, I have to think that making aggressive “look at me” announcements to lines of people, and/or glaring at completely innocent people who happened to use the elevator before you, is not a helpful, graceful, polite, or effective means of dealing with the situation.

“I rush to defend the needs of others in my situation, “… are these people really in need of your visible and public crusading? Or are you doing it for some other reason?

If I spend 4 extra hours at the station, hauling hose packs and tools up and down stairs, dragging people down hallways, lifting stretchers “with the legs people,” and I decide to use the Metro elevator on the way up, and I get a glare or lecture from you, I’m going to reciprocate in kind, and/or we’ll both come away angry. (feel free to replace my situation with that of shepherding a tired, hot, family through the zoo, being lost and unfamiliar with a city where you don’t even know that people don’t usually use the elevator, etc.)

Alternately, though it can be truly difficult, we could both try and exercise a little grace in the situation – though it’s far and away the most tempting option, fighting fire with fire does not work w/r/t lack of empathy and general jerkdom. It just sets more things on fire. (and hey, maybe you have done, and you’re “out”. In which case I sympathize, but you’ve got to get back in that game.)

I’m not going to take up space in an elevator from some lady in a wheelchair who has already probably dealt with enough Metro BS today. Similarly, I wouldn’t expect anyone to subject me to a shaming little piece of street theater because they’re in a line for the elevator…

Folks in a wheelchair waiting,a nd folks without a wheel chair waiting – you don’t know what the situation is of everyone else in line. You just don’t, so you have to refer to general principles. I have found truly and throughout my life that courtesy begets courtesy, and the way through any situation that doesn’t involve you turning into someone you (and everyone else) wouldn’t like or want to meet today is the most efficient way.

Sadly, WOV does not win anything, except the right to have the above comment repeated in the body of a subsequent post. We appreciate all our reader contributions, however, and we look forward to the next 30,000.

Update: As requested by TC (in the comments), the first ever comment left on DCist was composed by founding editor Rob Goodspeed on this post, by founding editor Mike Grass. Enjoy.