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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