Sometimes when things happen with a client or involving a them, things can be, not so funny, not funny at all, holy crap, or really fully. And sometimes the not so funny things turn into hilariously funny things.
One of my clients lives in a house, but he doesn’t use his wheelchair in the house. He can get around without it, so it is sometimes stored in the van, which I think is a great idea. He has a long stairway from his house down to the side walk and two walls on either side that run perpendicular to the stairs. It almost makes you feel held in by these walls. At the bottom the two walls go horizontal to the stairs, one runs North, the other South. I usually park the wheelchair against one if these walls, so he has support when sitting into the wheelchair. Oh, I should mention the house is on a huge hill with an incline of approx seventy degrees, like in a small country or island made of all hills.
One day we are about to go out, he waits inside until the chair is all set up. I go down the steps to the van, open the trunk and take out the wheelchair. It is titanium, so weighs about twenty pounds and has no extra pieces. Usually when it is in the van, the brakes are on to keep it stable, so I never check. I lifted it out with no trouble and park it with the back of the wheelchair along the north wall. I turn around to close the van and hear a funny noise. Now, because it is a titanium chair, with no bells or whistles (headrest, shaky footrest, anti tip bars) or anything that makes noise and weighs twenty pounds, I assume the sound I hear is a squirrel running through the leaves. Something told me to turn around, I was ready to fight off some pesky squirrel. When to my horrifying sight, there goes the wheelchair down the hill. I quickly jump into action without even really thinking about cars. Oh no, cars. I chase after it, catch up to it, almost caught it but had to let it go or it would’ve tripped me. I stopped for about .7 seconds before I started chasing it again, this time I was determined to catch it. I took off again (I knew my relay racing would come in handy someday). This time I slowed down as I got closer to it, reached out and grabbed it, caught it this time! I then pushed it it back up half of the hill and parked it, with the brakes on might I add. I then almost fell over cackling at what had just happened. A lady across the street who had witnessed this, asked if i was okay. I just stood there laughing and said “did you just see what happened. That took me about five minutes. I pulled myself up the stairs, and got ready to leave.
alwaysanadventure 