Read the following passage and answer the questions given below it: I wasn't in a hurry to get back to my hospital room, but I had a lot on my mind. I was adjusting to my new fate, quadriplegia.…

Read the following passage and answer the questions given below it: I wasn't in a hurry to get back to my hospital room, but I had a lot on my mind. I was adjusting to my new fate, quadriplegia. Besides, I had been waiting at least three minutes for the elevator, which in teen-age time is three years. When I heard the ding, I dashed into the car, unintentionally cutting off the handful of other riders. "What's the big hurry?" a pregnant woman asked. An elderly Asian man chimed in: "Leave the young man alone. He's in a wheelchair!" That was the first time I felt my new place in society. A few months later, my friend Roy and I were in the back of a ticket-holders' line that was clogging 34th Street waiting to see "The Empire Strikes Back" at the Murray Hill cinema. Suddenly an usher appeared and asked us to follow him into the theater. Despite the drizzle, the other patrons didn't seem to mind that we were cutting ahead. I was the only one in line that had a chair to sit in. Yet I didn't have to wait. Thereafter, I began to cut ahead often. Cashing a check at Chase, I'd ignore the velvet ropes and go straight to a teller. Registering for classes at N.Y.U., I cut three lines in one day: department approval, course selection and, finally, registrar payment. Older people who only a few months earlier would have ignored a teen-ager with long hair began acting very friendly. Senior citizens still smile at me 17 years after I crashed my car in Park Slope, breaking my neck, just days before my 18th birthday. Are they trying to cheer me up? Maybe they just see me as nonthreatening. They're probably thinking, "This guy is less than half my age, but I can still beat him up." soon after leaving the hospital, I realized I could now break rules. I would sneak cans of beer into concerts at Madison Square Garden. At the queue where teen-agers are routinely patted down, the guards held up the process for me: "Please step back, we gotta a wheelchair coming through!" When I leave Staples, I tell the security guard that I need the plastic shopping basket to carry my goods to my van. He nods his head trustingly, on the assumption that I'll unload and return it. I have five of these red baskets in my hallway closet. I don't know what I'm going to do with them. I just get a kick driving them home. Before I left Jamaica last January, I hid a box of Cuban cigars in my canvas case. As I passed through customs at Newark International Airport, a woman in a brown uniform looked at my two large bags suspiciously. Perusing the card I filled out on the plane, she asked, "Nothing to declare?" "Nothing." "What's the canvas bag for?" "It's a portable handicap shower seat," I replied truthfully. "Oh. . .I'm so sorry. Go ahead." Cutting the lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my driver's license, getting out of speeding tickets and arriving late to work without a reprimand are my "even uppers" for my physical limitations and for the difficulties caused by establishments not complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act. I had to sit behind the last row in a theater, separated from my college friends, only once before I stopped being too proud to accept the senior citizens' discount offered by sympathetic employees. When the purser offered to bump me up into first class on that flight from Jamaica, I didn't say: "No, thank you. I've accepted my disability, I have a successful career and live independently. Please treat me like everyone else." I didn't care whether she was condescending, sympathizing or patronizing. I was just glad to be in "2B" sipping Chardonnay while I eyed the coach passengers frantically seeking space for their carry-on luggage and duty-free rum. After sneaking my cigars through customs, I headed upstairs to get a taxi. Three carloads of tired travelers, dragging luggage with and without wheels, were waiting for a single elevator to arrive. I waited like an Olympic sprinter anticipating the starting gun. I began inching my wheelchair forward, but accidentally wheeled over some guy's foot. "Oww!" He turned around, saw my wheelchair and then followed nervously with, "Oh, I'm ss. . .sss. . .sorry." He stepped to the side, leaving me perfectly positioned in front of the sliding aluminum doors. The "L" on the display lighted, the ding went off, the doors opened, I swiftly pushed my chair forward into the car. "What's wrong with you?" a well-tanned girl asked me angrily. I looked her in the eye with cockiness, expecting my usual support from others. But it didn't come. "Have some respect, for God's sake!" she continued, holding the door open for a middle-aged man with dark glasses and a white cane. There in the elevator, as everyone looked at me in disgust, I learned the pecking order: blind trumps wheelchair; wheelchair trumps pregnant; pregnant trumps old; old trumps whatever is left. a. What "new place in society" does the speaker occupy after his accident? b. How does the speaker take advantage of his new status? c. Why did the woman in a brown uniform looked at the speaker's two large bags? d. According to the speaker, how are cutting in line, avoiding speeding tickets, and getting to work late his "even uppers"? e. Mention the incident that causes the speaker to realize that the advantage he gets from his disability have limitations.