Mobility Madness

A while back there used to be a show called Some Mothers' Do have 'em, Tv madness akin to the Dick van Dyke show. A completely accident prone man that was unable to get through life without causing chaos. I remember watching it and thinking there was no way that anyone could cause that much mayhem, until I got a mobility scooter!!

I was 36 when I was told not to walk anywhere alone due to hyper mobile joints that would dislocate when it suited them,so my long suffering husband and I perused the market for something I could use to get about. Ordered and delivered I looked on at my mini trike, more like an actual scooter than a mobility scooter, I felt like I could sit and ride this thing and feel relatively confident that I wouldn't get too flustered using it, or feel too much shame at needing to use it at that age. In theory it should be fine, I'd used something similar, except instead of levers to move forward and backwards it had gears like a motor bike where you have to use the hand grips to shift through them on one side and to reverse you shift back down through the speeds and pull down further, makes sense right? Something easy enough to remember? Yeah not when you have the memory span of a goldfish.

Her maiden voyage to Tesco was easy enough, stayed in a low gear nice and steady all the way down, then to an even lower gear to go around the store. Nice and simple. Pfft!!!

Getting through the entrance no problem I happened to notice a sale on women's clothes and decided, I don't own enough pjs, despite the fact that that was all I owned.

I'd never realized how narrow the aisles between the hanging rails were up until that point and had gotten myself into a slow motion game of chicken with a woman in this small enclosed space and figured as she had travelled further than I had the polite thing to do would be to reverse back down the aisle so she could come towards me and through the aisle. Remember how it's done? Pull the gears back down to get to reverse and pay attention to people that may be behind you. Most of all though you want to remember that fact and stay calm. What you shouldn't do is be so eager to get out of the way that you forget this shift up into high gear and dart forward whilst trying to turn the handles and look over your shoulder.

The upshot of this is likely to become what I experienced and the impending mortification that will come with it.

After twisting up through the gears I shot forward at ten miles per hour causing the poor woman I'd been trying to move for to wedge herself in with the clothes to avoid being run over by me, then everything went dark.

From where I was I could hear muffled voices asking if I was ok and generally a LOT of laughing.

In the process of shooting forward I had found myself buried in a hanging carousel of trousers, leggings and coat-hangers that was at the other end of the aisle. Honestly, I couldn't tell you quite how embarrassing this was but what can you do? As it turns out all you can do is sit there for twenty minutes whilst both staff and security systematically remove items of clothing and afore mentioned coat-hangers in order to locate you, still sat on your mobility scooter, bright red and crying with laughter. Hoping against hope that no one is filming it.

The staff were so incredibly helpful about it all, even though they couldn't contain their laughter, and very patient about dismantling the carousel rail so I could roll out of where I was wedged and continue with my shopping,they even allocated a member of staff to walk round with me though I suspect that was more in case I needed help again. I really wish that I could say that I've had no more misadventures on my scooter but come valentines day when the buckets of flowers had all been displayed at the front of the store I ended up causing a flood reversing as I then found out that you could also shift up through reversing gears too in order to do it faster, luckily for me the staff know me down there but there's nothing quite like being buried in a pile of leggings and getting a call from your daughter asking how you managed to destroy the clothing department before the staff have even found you!!