Apr 18, 2007

What the man will do for ice cream.

Gary suffered through the ordeal of having to go get a new driver’s license. First he had to convince them that he did not, in fact, need to be examined by the state medical doctors and have another driver’s test (I guess the person he spoke with did not comprehend the piece of paper he had from the State Vocational Rehab Office, which said it was in lieu of all that). He then had to get a number and wait. He was number thirteen. He didn’t think that was too bad. Until he found out they were on number seventy-seven and the numbers went up to a hundred. After waiting close to two hours, they finally reached number 100. Evidently the people there felt sorry for him and at that point waved him in ahead of the other dozen people.

After getting his license, he went to the Court House to get handicapped plates and a handicapped placard. Amazingly, he was the only one there! (I joked that they were all over at the other place). So in a few minutes he had our new plates. He pointed out to me that if we had had to do this last month, I would have had to go with him for all this. I’m grateful, I’m grateful!!!

(So, Norma, I hear you would have preferred that I had had to go with him, so you could read my complaints about it on the blog.)

But he thought it was wonderful (and so do I) that he could go all over the place and do this all on his own.

(But he notes, ironically, that he can wheel from the Student Activities Building where he does his weight training to the math building faster than he can drive there – because of the time it takes him to do the transfer into the driver’s seat and get situated.)

After getting his license and the plates, he decided he deserved ice cream. At first he was going to go to the drive-in window, but then he realized that if he did that, having to hold the ice cream cone in one hand would mean that he would have only one hand to do everything else, namely, steer, brake, accelerate. Fortunately he decided not to chance that (I did point out there was a drink holder in the dashboard, but since he hadn’t tested that out ahead of time, he didn’t want to chance that the ice cream cone would stay in it when he drove from the window (and given his jerky driving, who knows if it would : -) – he said we’ll test that when we go to Kroger this weekend ;-)).

So, to get the ice cream he would have to transfer out of the driver’s seat and wheel to the service window. (Well, I told him he could have told the people at the drive-in window that he was just going to sit there blocking traffic until he’d finished his ice cream.) Unfortunately, after he transferred out of the driver’s seat, he realized he’d left the keys in the ignition, and he couldn’t reach them. So he had to transfer back into the driver’s seat and get the keys (he noted he won’t be making that mistake very often). Then he transferred back into his chair (he got lots of transfer practice today), and wheeled out of the van to the service window.

Finally he got his ice cream.

Now, I ask you, was that worth it? ;-)