Late Night Adventures in the Land of Leprechauns, Unicorns, and Handicap Vans

When Justin and I started dating, Justin had this phrase he would use anytime the wheelchair made things awkward in "able-bodied" situations, "Handicapped people are like leprechauns, the tooth fairy or unicorns--people don't think we really exist."  And you know, it's amazing how true that phrase is in certain situations.  One of my favorites is when we're walking through a crowded hallway in a mall and people practically trip over Justin's chair because they weren't watching where they were going and then give him/us accusatory glances, as if to say, "How could you get in my way, person that I didn't think really existed or I wouldn't have run into your big metal chair!!??"

Well, last night we had one of those adventures that can only happen in the "fictional" world of the handicapped.  It started out like any other Tuesday evening in the life of the Hancocks.  After being at school a full day and working at church for several hours, it was finally 9:00 p.m. and time to go home.  Justin is attending a class on C.S. Lewis at a church close to campus, so he joined me at school for the afternoon and evening.  When his class let out, the first sign of trouble arose.  The wires connected to the automated door on our "pimped out" handicap van jumped the track, so to speak, and made it necessary to manually encourage the door to open so that the ramp could extend.  Now, though a sign of potential hazard, this was not overly worrisome because we have an appointment with the Handicap Van Mechanics (wonderful people!) on Friday, so we just need the door to continue opening and closing, somehow, until then.  So, we go on our merry way, with the only real complaint on our minds being the feeling of hunger developing in our stomachs since dinner was at least 3 hours ago.  With thoughts of popcorn and coffee filling our heads, we park at the apartment, I get out to further encourage the door to open, and I come face-to-face with a highly unfortunate circumstance--the wires have become so tangled the door will only open halfway, blocking the ramp from extending at all, and Justin is summarily stuck in the van.  One of the greatest travails found in the Land of Leprechauns, Unicorns, and Handicapped People--the failure of one piece of technology equals a major hurtle to the continuation of "normal life."  So, here we are at 9:30, sitting in the parking lot feet from our apartment with it's nice pantry, refrigerator and bed, and my husband is unable to get out of the van, at all!

Thankfully, having faced similar situations in the past, we had an ever-so-slight hope that the local handicap van shop has an emergency phone line for times such as these, and Praise Jesus! We were correct!  The downside--the handicap van shop is in Mesquite, Tx, 30 minutes from our apartment, and the mechanic on call who was willing to come out to us lives at least an hour from our apartment.  Wonderful people that they are, though, we finally arranged to meet the office administrator and her husband, who was going to cut out the nasty wires according to directions given to him over the phone by the head mechanic.  Granted, we had no idea how successful this venture would be or what state it would leave the van door/ramp mechanism in, but if it meant we could get Justin out of the car without asking him to attempt Rodney Dangerfield-like jumps out of the van with his wheelchair, we were willing to give it a shot.  Since it is not after 10 p.m., I filled the gas tank up, bought some peanut butter M&Ms for the road (because yes, we were still hungry!), and off to Mesquite we went.


Let me just say, you will never meet nicer people than the people of Advanced Mobility in Mesquite, Tx.  These are people who work day in and day out performing a very specialized service for a very distinct group of people.  They could charge whatever they want and treat us however they want because they are one of the only shops in East Texas that sells and provides maintenance for wheelchair accessible vans.  But, to their good credit, they treat us with dignity, respect, and kindness that is difficult to find in a world that doesn't often act like the disabled exist.  The two people who met us were concerned about Justin being trapped in the van and about whether I would be able to handle the van if I needed to pull out the ramp manually.  And you know, everything worked okay.  The only part we have to do manually with the wires cut out is help the door close.  Otherwise, everything works as well as it ever has.

I know that every person has moments of crisis and problems to deal with, but the unique nature of the kinds of problems that come with life in the disabled context are not only difficult to understand, but are also nearly impossible to foresee without firsthand experience and/or a large dose of empathy.  As I look back at last night, I have to laugh at the way God provided for us.  It may not seem like God was in the experience at all, seeing as Justin seemed to be hopelessly stuck in the for who knows how long.  But, to look deeper, He provided in extraordinary ways by enabling me to finish my homework earlier in the day so I had not pressing homework to do last night, by making the temporary fix so easy compared to past experiences with the breakdown of the ramp, and by providing Justin and I some unexpected time together in which we discussed all sorts of normal conversation topics, like Nietzsche's madman, Chesterton's Orthodoxy, and C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man.  (Maybe not typical for some couples, but the best kinds of conversation by our standards.)  You know, life on this side of the divide is pretty much the same as in the "real world"; you laugh, you cry, and the leprechauns really don't live at the end of the rainbow, because they're too busy guarding the Tooth Fairy's rose garden from the unicorns, of course.

Seriously, though, at the end of the day when the wheelchair is turned off and everything is still, it is comforting to know that we can say with all the saints who have gone before and come after, with all their varying abilities and disabilities: God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good.