Monday, April 5, 2021

Dancing With My Blower

 

 I hope I get an opportunity to dance again, at a wedding or something like that. Because a couple years ago I had this attachment added to my motorized wheelchair that makes it possible for me to drive the chair hands-free by blowing into a hose. I call this attachment my blower.

 I got a blower because sometimes it’s too difficult for me to drive with my hand, especially outdoors where the terrain is rough and/or when my hands are cold. It took a good deal of practice for me to become proficient at blower driving because it’s tricky.  You have to exhale to go forward and inhale to reverse etc. etc. I still have dents and gashes in the walls of my home that were created when I zigged instead of zagging while using my blower.

But now I’m a blower driving pro! If there was an Olympic downhill slalom event for blower drivers, I’d probably win the gold fucking medal!

But one thing I haven’t tried out while using the blower yet is dancing. I could dance pretty good driving with my hand. I could whirl my chair around in a circle and all. But it’ll take a whole lot of hard concentration to dance using my blower without flattening too many of the other people on the dancefloor. 

Whenever I go out on the dancefloor in my wheelchair, it’s inevitable that I’ll receive enthusiastic accolades from many of the dancing verts (which it what I call people who walk because it’s short for verticals). They smile big and applaud me or flash me a triumphant thumbs up. Sometimes the drunken ones cut in and make it a dancing threesome. This unwarranted 0effusiveness makes me uneasy because I fear that in their minds, by being out there dancing I’m demonstrating how brave and courageous I am. Maybe that’s why some verts get all overcome like that when they see cripples having fun.  Maybe they expect us to be so sad and tragic all the time and they’re pleasantly stunned to see us behaving the opposite. But really, I’m dancing for the same reason they are. I just feel like dancing and maybe I can think of a whole bunch of reasons why I shouldn’t but I say fuck it and go do it anyway. But then again, I guess that’s a form of bravery, when a person thinks of a whole bunch of reasons why they shouldn’t do something but then says fuck it and does it anyway.  I guess I don’t mind being seen as that kind of brave.

So when I dance by using my blower, some of the verts will probably be super duper overcome to see me on the dancefloor. But fuck it, I’ll do it anyway.

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