Power Chair Mishaps or, Beware the Chair!

You've all seen those power chair adds where everyone is tooling smoothly along with nary a mishap, right? Lies, all lies! They have been neatly choreographed, the maneuvers diligently rehearsed and my guess on takes would be about twenty. Now I will tell you the rest of the story. Power chairs are awesome, there is no doubt about it, but getting the hang of handling one is a challenge, at best. I've been using one for nearly a year and still find myself in awkward, and sometimes hilarious situations.

I'll start with speed. My chair has five speeds forward, one being a crawl and five powering me up to the equivalent of speed walking. Reverse is slow but relative to my forward motion. I usually power around the house on three, comfortable enough to feel safe, usually, but fast enough to make me feel like I'm getting somewhere. The problem here is judgement, which also raises another problem, spacial awareness.

Suffice it to say that all our door jambs are missing paint at the level of my bumpers, our kitchen cabinets have an artistic looking collection of long scuffs where I missed turning on that proverbial dime, and I managed to shear the knob off a drawer with the arm of the chair. In my own defence, our home is old, small, maneuvering is tricky, and most damage was incurred early on, which brings me to...

Backing up. I have backed into chairs, tables and footstools, succeeding in rearranging much of our furniture. Let me state here that I was a very good driver, really! My husband, who is also a good driver and can make driving a bulldozer look like child's play, thought I was being careless and decided to teach me a lesson. He hopped into my chair, turned, and with a look of male superiority, drove smack into the phone table. He no longer picks on me.

But the best was the day I was headed out of doors to sit in the sun and read. I had managed to get the door open and the chair aimed for the first ramp onto the porch, ready to roll. What I neglected to notice was that I had inadvertently hit the speed button which was now reading five. I grabbed the joy stick and, to my horror and surprise, my chair and I shot through the door like a rocket, down the ramp, onto the porch and on down the second ramp into the yard before I ever knew what was happening. After the wave of adrenalin and fear wore off, the full picture of what I must have looked like registered and I dissolved into fits of laughter.