When Your Wheelchair Saves Your Life

 

You never know when your wheelchair just might save your life.

My friend Greg offers a case in point: Greg used to live in Florida, in the part where there are a lot of alligators roaming around freely. You never know if you might turn a corner and suddenly encounter an alligator. Their omnipresence is sort of like bears in Alaska

But anyway, one day Greg pulled up in front of his home in his cripple van. He deployed the ramp and just as he was getting out of the van he noticed that there was an alligator on the front lawn. Oh shit! What should he do? He thought about closing the van up and waiting inside until the alligator decided to leave. But that could take all night. The alligator looked comfy. So Greg decided that his best option was to gun it. He drove his wheelchair full throttle and sped to his front door, hoping he could outrun the alligator. And that must’ve been what happened because Greg got inside his house safely.

Maybe the alligator was too comfy to get up and chase after Greg. I don’t know. But I do know that something  similar happened to me at Yellowstone National Park. I turned around and there was a buffalo. Not more than 20 feet away. I looked at him. He looked at me. I felt my heart pounding. I said to myself, “Damn! If he wants me, he’s got me!” If the buffalo decided to charge me, I was screwed! It wouldn’t matter whether it trampled me or not. If it would have started charging me, I would have died of a heart attack before it got to me.

But, judging by the perplexed expression on the face of the buffalo as it looked at me, it was probably saying to itself, “Damn! If he wants me, he’s got me!” And then it ran away.

I think my wheelchair saved my life that time because I’ve seen that same perplexed look on the faces of some humans when they suddenly encounter somebody in a wheelchair. And if the sight of a wheelchair can confound a human, it must be downright terrifying to a dumb animal like a buffalo. That’s probably what made it run away.

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