I saw something on my way home from work that made me laugh. A lot. On my way home, I always pass by a hospital. An extremely obese gentleman was zipping across the cross-walk in front of my car. The device he was using was one of those wheelchairs that look sort of like a scooter. They’ve got a motor and a little basket that you can put things in. Anyway, said large gentleman zips across the cross-walk, yelling at a couple of people to get out of the way. Then he reaches the slope that makes the curb handicapped accessible. Because of his weight, the motor on the wheelchair was unable to propel him up the slope, and instead slid backward and off the curb almost halfway to the center of the crosswalk. Abruptly, the man hops out of his wheelchair, walks to the center of my lane, grabs his little wheelchair by the basket, and drags it from where it stopped (about 2 yards from the curb) onto the curb. My mouth fell open. I was aghast. He’s healed! Thank you Jaysus!! I find myself thinking, as a little giggle comes out of my wide-open, fly-catching mouth.
Apparently the man was not very happy with his wheelchair cum scooter, as he abruptly turned purple, whirled around (quite quickly for a man of his considerable girth and who had just then been invalid enough as to be incapable of walking across the street) and started kicking the vehicle while stamping and hopping around it, looking for all the world like he was doing an odd sort of war dance. I started snorting and laughing. I think he heard me because started yelling at me. I just laughed harder. I just couldn’t seem to help it. The situation was so unexpected that it was just hystserical.
And before I get flamed, I wasn’t laughing because the man was overweight. I also wasn’t laughing because the man clearly had a medical condition that “confined” him to a wheelchair (or not). The whole situation was just hilarious, though. The surprise factor was the clincher. Sort of like when my fiancee abruptly started clucking like a chicken at the waitress on our first date. Completely unexpected, which is what made it so fucking funny. Ah, sweet irony (or something like it).
Okay, I probably would’ve laughed too. But many people in scooters are not there because they can’t walk at all but because they have heart or lung conditions that make it impossible for them to walk far enough to lead a normal life without the scooter.
I’ve always wondered about that. My friend’s mom is very large and uses a cane because the weight puts a lot of pressure on her joints and makes it painful to walk.
I think I’m going to hell for this. But I’ll have company.
Weird happenings seem to be attracted to that particular corner. That was the same place that I saw Bob the transvestite twirling his baton. The next block there was a naked teenager running around his SUV. And that was all in the same morning. I think I’m gifted with some extraordinary timing. That or I find everything funny.
What? Why did your fiancée do this? And how did you become engaged to her before your first date? Or did she abruptly start clucking like a chicken at the woman who waited on your during your first date some time later, during a chance meeting with the waitress, perhaps.
Seriously, though, why did your date abruptly cluck at a waitress? That just sounds rude.
Nvme77 If you go to a lot of trade shows and event-hall events, you’ll find that they’ve started renting scooters! I’m always tempted… wouldn’t it be fun, although cruel and horrible, to wrap up in weird bandages and drive around a technology expo on a rented scooter?
I always used to hate in in places like disney world where you’d see someone young but very large in a hovaround and they get to skip you in line to ride the rides.
If your heart and lungs work well enough for you to ride spiderman, then bite the bullet ande WALK, or your not allowed in the park. I have no sympathy for anyone anymore. I’m gonna go to hell I know it
My fiancee has a strange sense of humor. And no - I wasn’t engaged to him before our first date. We’d been friends for years beforehand, and had always been attracted to each other. Circumstances just didn’t allow us to get together. By the time we went out on our first date, we had been telling people “Oh, we’re just friends,” for about 6 months, though we were more or less dating already. Neither of us had the guts to ask the other out until we went through nearly two bottles of wine in one night three years ago.
Anyway, he had this strange fascination with chickens at the time, which for some reason I thought was hilarious. I imagine that reason had a lot to do with the fact that we had finally admitted to each other that we were dating. Or it could be because I have just as bizarre a sense of humor as my fiancee does. Yeah, I think that’s it.
I had had a really bad day before we went on that date, and he knew it. To top it off, the waitress was being pretty rude - she was a teenaged girl who clearly didn’t want to be there, kept sighing and rolling her eyes, etc. My now-fiancee was hoping to make our date as memorable and fun as possible, so he started clucking at this girl to make me laugh. It definitely cheered me up. Fortunately, my fiancee has moved on from chickens and clucking at waitresses. Now when I’m upset he just chases me around the house threatening to tickle me.
Clucking or no clucking, I consider myself a lucky girl - he got almost as much a laugh out of this story as I did. Then he started imitating the cat.
Bob the transvestite with his baton? I saw him at Mardi Gras last year. He was doing his baton act along with some of the marching units. He was terrific!
Flowerchild, some people use wheelchairs or scooters not because they have heart or lung problems, but because they have orthopedic problems that mean they CAN’T walk a long ways. So you can’t just automatically judge all people that way. Sometimes even the large people in scooters or wheelchairs. Did it ever occur to you that one reason they’re so large might be because they have a lot of physical difficulty with exercise? All I’m saying is, try a little compassion.
And by the way, last time we were at Disneyland with someone in a wheelchair, they were building the lines for the new rides so that you did NOT get to cut to the front of the line. I suspect that will become more and more commonplace. (It was a real bummer, too, for us, anyway!)
Uh, I have no idea if you care, but just in case you do: fiancee with two e’s denotes female. You are his fiancee (sorry, don’t know how to do the accent but it appears above the first e in both cases) and he is your fiance. Just in case you care.
Come visit my cancer hospital. You won’t see just one. Hell, some of those lazy half-dead people are downright skeletal, which isn’t healthy. And some of them are so blown up on chemo or steroids or methotrexate that they’re blimps. But a lot of the average size folks are on their scooters and in their electric chairs as well.
Gotta crack down on those slacker-ass dying people that might crowd the streets.
Some of us have had to use scooters at times because we have neurological conditions(in my case it’s multiple sclerosis) which can make us get fatigued easily, necessitating using one of those humiliating devices if we want to get things accomplished.
My wife uses a scooter due a numerous accumulative conditions which make it difficult for her to walk more than twenty feet. Her situation is complicated by the fact that she’s also legally blind, so she can’t see where she’s going real well. (When we go out I act as her seeing-eye dog, keeping her on the path and trying to keep people from stepping in front of her.)
Still, I find the image of someone getting out of their scooter and kicking it pretty funny. It sounds like his battery might have been run down; it’s happened to us on long days out - they’re only good for about twenty miles, which isn’t always as long as it seems. There was one day in Vegas I thought I was going to have to push the scooter through the casino to get to our room to recharge it.
This week for the first time I had to use a scooter. I’ve been in congestive Heart failure for some time, but can get around fairly well. If I don’t try walking that far. However in the last couple of months I’ve developed a “Female Problem” that has left me severally anaemic, three blood transfusions this week. It gives one a whole new respect for the people who have to use scooters full time.
overlyverbose I would have laughed also. Those who can find and laugh at life’s little absurdities life a much happier life.
I’ve used scooters and wheelchairs on occasion – for good reason! – and must confess that I would laugh too. Who here has not cussed their car out when it broke down, after all?
My problems are orthopedic and neurological, and I daresay that few people argue when they see me using a scooter or chair or using a handicap parking spot. But my heart and lungs are fine. Nor am I overweight, but I consider that to be as much luck as anything else considering the amount of time I spend sitting here in front of my computer eating chocolate.
I really think it should be somehow required that everybody use a wheelchair or scooter for at least a day. I seriously think that would radically change people’s ideas towards physical accomodations AND how they treat people who use those things all the time – it can be a major pain in the butt.
I’ve been saying for years (ever since my wife got her scooter) that everyone who owns, works for, or designs any facility requiring wheelchair access should be duct-taped into a wheelchair for a week and forced to deal with what passes for “handicapped accessibility” at most places.
“Oh, you can’t go up the four steps to get into the hotel restaurant? All you have to do is take the elevator at the other end of the lobby to the lower level, go through the (unmarked) service corridor until you get to the lower lobby, and take the elevator back up to the restaurant. Yes, that one just the other side of the steps. What? Oh, yes, we used to have a ramp alongside those steps, but when the hotel was redecorated [some idiot] decided the ramp [some bullshit excuse like “ruined the esthetics of the hallway”].”
Hmmm… I had no idea. I knew it was French, and I am embarrassed to say that, despite the fact that I obviously can’t spell anything in French, I frequently read in French when I’m researching. Well, that’ll make the thank you notes for the engagement gifts a hell of a lot less embarrassing! One fewer faux pas to worry about.
