So, I
entered a contest I saw on FB. Vocal’s
putting on a contest titled #MyWorstDate to be judged Feb. 20th. Anyhoo, if you wanna vote for me, go to
vocal.media, and search my name Jason Rhode.
You’ll find it there along with my other writings that you’ll recognize
from here.
#MyWorstDate.
Joey, my
then girlfriend, and I were walking home from I don’t remember where…that’s how
bad this date was, right? We probably
were walking home from the movies before the buses started running in our town,
so being in wheelchairs, we had no choice, but to walk.
Now, walking
around town’s normally no biggie. We’ve
done it millions of times, in any direction.
I’ve got routes for anywhere I want to go. So, going to and from the movies is no
problem unless the traffic’s bad, or weather decides to go south. We live in West Texas in the desert, so all
bets are off.
OK, the
movie ends, and we set off for home. The
first hurdle is a major street the runs east-west. See where this is going? The way I have to look to start our cross is
right into the setting sun…great! I say
a prayer, and totally going on my hearing and the grace of God and the
attention of drivers, I get us across.
Phew.
Continuing,
we go down the side streets, which is the way I’ve been doing it since I was
young. We only cross major streets if we
have to…and, walking on the shoulder of major roads is only done for very short
distances or if there happens to be a bike trail. The next major street we have to cross, we
have a median to contend with. Luckily,
there a couple lights that could help.
The first is a one-way, so we just have to wait for the light to turn
red, and New York cross, which is going between the cars waiting for the light
to change. Once across there, we wait in
the cutout of the median that just fits to chairs snugly. When that light changes, we haul across to
the side street until we get to the third major street.
However,
before getting to the third major street, our journey got very
interesting. You see, as we were
walking, a storm was tailing us the whole time.
Yeah, we started to feel little sprinkles, but thought we could outrun
it. Wrong. Going down McDonald, it started sprinkling
harder. The faster we went, the harder
the rain seemed to get. Dude. And, of course, there were no awnings for us
to hide under until the storm passed, so we continued.
Now, we’re
getting wet, and water and electric wheelchairs don’t make good bed
partners. Most of the time it’s nothing
to walk in a drizzle. We’ve all been
caught out in one at some time or other.
Except, when the rubber lining that covers the mechanical mechanisms of
your control has been frayed, water gets in there and plays havoc on said
electronic mechanisms. So, it was with
Joey’s chair. This chair, we called The
Tank, because it was so old, it was literally made out of metal…like an old
car…instead of the recycled DP can you threw away yesterday.
 |
| The Tank |
Here we are
getting wet and wetter when Joey’s chair starts to short out. Oh my God!
It’d work for a bit, then, short out again. Eventually, her chair stopped
altogether. By this time, it was
pouring. If her battery’d just died, I
could’ve pushed her while she steered.
That’s not the case when the motors seize. We were screwed.
Then, a
group of guys stopped in their truck to see if they could help. The offered to take Joey out of her busted
chair, load said chair in the bed of their truck, and drive her home. I’d walk home since I was already soaked, and
my chair was fine otherwise. The thing
was Joey wasn’t wearing a bra and her shirt was white. Damn the luck again! No wonder they helped her out. Seriously though, they took she and I made it
home to meet them, and they helped us get her in the house with her chair,
which took a week or so to dry out. From
then on, we go out with a plastic bag to put over our controls for those ‘just
if’ moments.
Be good to each other.
-J-
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