Rolling boredom

Among drivers of Jeep Wranglers and old CJs there's a custom where the drivers will wave at one another when passing each other on the road. I found this custom to be fun and it was one of the better parts of owning a Wrangler.

This custom seems to have carried over to wheelchair drivers but with a twist. It seems that every time B and I are outdoors, every other person in a wheelchair feels the need not to just wave but to stop and have a conversation.

It's driving us crazy. Him more than me because he's the one stuck having the actual conversation. I just try to not look bored out of my mind.

The irritation has nothing to do with the other person being in a wheelchair. That's merely the magnet that draws them to us. The irritation is that we're not friends with these people. We don't really know them. They waste our time talking about stuff we're not interested in and telling us about their miseries. Hey, I'm sorry their life sucks sometimes. My life sucks too at times but I don't track down every fat butted woman and tell her about it because we both happen to have fat butts.

There's a woman who lives in our general area. She gets around with a wheelchair because of a leg deformity. A week after I moved to Germany in 1997 B and I met her at a Christmas party given by the handicap transport service we happen to both use. Even then the conversation consisted of us giving the barest of details about each other and afterwards her exsistance was dismissed from our minds. A couple years later we happened to run into her downtown and she remembered us and we did a standard "Hi. How are you? We are fine." thing coupled with some crap about the weather, what new stuff is being build around is, and general blah, blah, blah. Since that time she moved closer to us and we see her virtually every time we're outdoors and the same conversation goes on every single time. We don't even know this woman's name and yet we have to spend a good fifteen minutes of our precious time outdoors (B can sit upright in his chair for a limited amount of time) talking about the dullest stuff of which man can conceive. And she's weird! She's weird and boring.

Another man who lives a few blocks from us is wheelchair bound because his legs were amputated in a work accident many years ago. Again, if we see him - and he's always outside so we're bound to see him - we have to be subjected to him bitching about his crappy life and how his ex-wife isn't nice to him and how his son is a drunk. Hey, I'm sorry fella but honest to God does anything else happen in your life? No? Then why do you have to bore us to death with saying the same thing every time?

B says "I hate talking to these people! It's bad enough that I'm paralyzed - do I have to be bored to death talking to people I don't give a crap about just because we both happen to have wheelchairs? And they're dorks! People think I'm a dork because I'm talking to these dorks!".

Today B and I spent a fabulous afternoon downtown. The weather has been unseasonably warm and we know there won't be many more days where B will be able to get outside. Once it turns cool he'll have to stay indoors because he's unable to control his body temperature very well and he becomes cold very easily. Every second outside is precious to us because soon it'll be month after month of him being stuck in the same room until warm weather comes again. We got off the streetcar and thought we'd sit in the market square for a while before going the couple blocks back to our apartment because the air was so lovely and we were enjoying it so much. We spotted a perfect spot for us to sit where the late afternoon sun wouldn't be blasting us in the eyes and just as I was about to sit B said "Don't look over there but keep walking. Keep walking! Act like you're going to the drugstore. Just keep going.".

Turns out one of our wheelchair stalkers was down the way a bit and had spotted us and was headed our way. We ended up having to sit way off from where we originally wanted to sit just to escape another session of boring talk. This can't be normal. It can't be normal to feel the need to run from others in wheelchairs to save one's sanity.

B said after we got back home "I love days like today but one more conversation with one of the dorks and I'm going to start to look forward to being indoors where they can't find me.".