The Escapee

This morning I took a trip to the nursing home to visit my grandmother, which is never a long stay since she doesn't really recognize anyone anymore. Right after I walked into the building, this painfully loud alarm went off. I was half asleep at the time, so I'm surprised I didn't crap my pants right there. At first, I thought I had caused the alarm to go off by coming through the door -- I had to come in through the side door, since they were blacktopping the parking lot at the front of the building. I then noticed that all the nurses were running towards the front of the building, so I peered down the hallway to see a little old man in a wheelchair trying his damndest to open the SECOND set of doors leading outside. That's right, he had already gone through the first set of doors, and now was just one thick pane of glass away from being outside.

I suddenly got this vision of the little old guy zooming down the road in his wheelchair with the nurses running after him. I'm sure those chairs would be able to build up a lot of steam if you got a nice downhill grade. I was laughing all the way to my grandmothers room for two reasons: 1) The mental picture I had painted in my head was quite hilarious. 2) It reminded me of ANOTHER incident that actually happened with a wheelchair.

A few years ago, I took a business trip to Jersey City to visit one of my company's customers. It was a two-day stay, so the first night the three of us on the trip took a drive into Time's Square in New York City. We had a rented car, and parked this at a garage so we could just walk around the place. It was around 3:00 AM when we made our way back to the garage. As we waited for the watchmen to open the gate for us, we hear something coming towards us from up the hill. We look to see some guy in a wheelchair rolling towards us at a furious pace, and we all step out of the way as he zoomed by us with his arms flailing about in the air. He was followed almost immediately by a woman who was clearly out of breath, who then asked us if we'd seen a guy in a wheelchair. We pointed her in the right direction, and then laughed all the way back to the hotel.