The other day, the medical supply company came to pick up the wheelchair we had rented while I recovered. I still can’t walk more than a block or so without a 10-minute rest and someone to cushion the fall, but I could use the money that paid for the wheelchair for other things. (I’ve become tragically addicted to this exciting substance with the street name “food.”)
It was, of course, a sleek, modern chair of aluminum and vinyl, and even my wife, who can weigh 100 pounds with only a few layers of wet wool, could lift it in and out of the car trunk with relative ease.
Not so with the wheelchairs of my youth.
They were petite in the same way blue whales are petite, but not so maneuverable. They were made of wood that was harvested just a week or so before it petrified and turned completely to stone. They were one-size-fits-all huge, and came from the factory with a wobble built into one of the small front tires that was guaranteed to shake anyone weighing less than 432 pounds into jelly within 30 yards. The word “comfort” was not to be found in the design specifications, and “moving patients” and “safety” only made it into the fine print after the footnotes.
If the person putting you in the wheelchair liked you, they would take three or four pillows and try to make a nest that would cushion the more violent jolts. Transporters would usually just throw a blanket on the seat and then you on top. I think the blanket was there to soak up any spilled blood.
Now that I’ve told you about that, I can tell the story I wanted to tell.
Before the Days of Lawsuits
We have become a nation that takes legal action at the slightest provocation. Spill your coffee? Sue the restaurant for having the nerve to make it hot. Don’t look your best? Find the company that made the material your suit is made out of, and take it to court for using that shade of blue dye. Kid got a bad grade? Take legal action against the teacher, because it certainly couldn’t be the kid’s fault.
It wasn’t always that way. Not that we didn’t go to court for stupid reasons. That’s an American tradition. But we did tend to take more responsibility for our own actions, and more important, we were more understanding of other people’s peccadilloes. Which brings me back to the transporters and those old wheelchairs.
One of the elevators the transporters liked to take was in a wing of the hospital that connected the main building to a building behind it. The architect had gotten around the difficulty of the four-foot difference in the level of the buildings’ floors by putting a ramp in the hall going down from the main hospital to the level of the other building.
The transporters liked to turn into that hallway and then start running as fast as they could while pushing your wheelchair—which would have been a lot better if you weren’t in it at the time. You’d be bouncing all over the seat, and the wobbly wheel would be making enough noise to drown out a Lockheed Constellation. About five feet from the ramp, they would let go of your chair and let the laws of physics take over.
Because of the wobbly wheel, the chair would immediately begin swerving to the left or right. About halfway down the ramp, it would bounce off the appropriate wall and take off toward the other wall. If you were lucky, you would have managed to grab hold of one of the armrests, which would keep you from slamming into the bits of the chair hard enough to make that blanket necessary. Usually the chair would come to a stop about 10 or 15 feet from the bottom of the ramp by rubbing against a wall.
Your transporter would saunter up to your chair a few seconds later. Sometimes—as in usually—he would be chatting up one of the female members of the staff and, depending on his success, would give you some time to make sure you still had all the bits you started with, and perhaps dry off a bit. After a time or two or three—OK, maybe four or five—you would realize that in that tank-like wheelchair you were probably the safest person in the hallway, and you would relax and start enjoying the ride.
Read more Guy Boss at the Missing Factor.