Wheelchair

(Parang pang Maalaala Mo Kaya lang ang title eh no?)

Last night I had a first encounter of the wheelchair kind. No I don’t mean that I rode one, because I had that experience years ago back in college when I was brought to the clinic in one after I nearly collapsed during a PE badminton session. Rather, last night was my first time to push someone in a wheelchair, and a stranger at that.

It all started when a guy in a wheelchair asked my friend Maya to help push him inside the MRT. Once inside, he asked us where we were getting off, and it turned out that I was the one who was getting off at his stop, so he asked if I could help wheel him to his bus stop. I said okay. Once we arrived at our stop, I rolled him off the train, into the lift, out the two-way exit made especially for wheelchair-bound people like him, and got ready to wheel him all the way to his bus stop which was a good 5 minutes away on foot. Before we could get there, though, he asked if I could bring him to Guardian and wait for him while he bought toiletries. So I wheeled him in but some of the aisles were too narrow for his chair. As I stood there in bewilderment, he raised his voice and yelled, “Cashier!” In less than a minute, she was there by his side, asking him if he wanted to buy shampoo. Hmmm. She knows this guy, huh? She pulled off several products from different shelves, showing them to him one by one, all of which were not what he was looking for. So we left empty-handed, and I wheeled him the rest of the way to his bus stop.

Coincidentally, the Desperate Housewives episode on TV after I got home also showed a guy in a wheelchair – Bree’s husband Orson. He blames her for being the reason why he has become an invalid, so he makes her life miserable by being rude and demanding and refusing to take a bath. She tells him that she doesn’t mind being his slave so long as he treats her nicely, like saying “please.” He refuses. In a fit of anger, she wheels him out to the garden and “bathes” him by drenching him in soap and hosing him. He begs her to stop; she says he knows the magic word to make her do so. So he says “please” repeatedly, and when she does stop, continues, “Please roll me over, please help me to the toilet, please, please please!” He says that’s his life now, asking her “please” for everything. He wakes up an hour and a half before her every day and thinks about how great it would be to get up, walk downstairs, and make himself tea without having to say please. Bree realizes how horrible she’s been and walks over to him and kneels down, saying, “Forgive me, please.”

The next morning, Joc, who had also been there in the MRT last night, asked me what had happened after I had left them. I relayed the story to her and to Joseph, who sat between us. “He took advantage of you,” was Joseph’s comment. “You were too nice, really.” I shrugged and said, “Yes he may have, but I thought, well at least I have full use of my legs. So I let it go.”

Sometimes we don’t realize how lucky we are. My legs fall asleep on me all the time and they easily get tired after long walks, but at least they’re fully functional. Thank you, God.