Chair Etiquette

Where were you raised?  Pick-up after yourself.  Put it back when you're done!  All common pleas from frustrated parents, particularly exasperated mothers.  By the time you reach adulthood you should have learned a few lessons--neatness and orderliness among them.

While enjoying a cup of morning coffee under this morning's sunrise, a good friend dropped by to join my on the patio.  Pulling a chair from under the patio table, he planted himself firmly before enlightening me to the recent events which had transpired in his semi-quarantined life.

Our chit-chat slowly tapered off until exhausted.  Screech...the chair pushed back and turned askew as my dear friend rose to continue his day.  And there the chair remained--where his posterior had deposited it--nowhere near the table from whence it came.

I was reminded of the daily battles I fought with lunch-room chairs at my workplace before my retirement.

The fact that I was disabled could not have escaped others present--imbibing on their morning cup of java or chowing down on the meager cafeteria offerings.

As a group from one department or another rose in unison to return to their daily travail--their chairs pushed out in a row askew--facing this way or that, some further some nearer.  Deposited like mines in the channel, they sat in wait of my attempt to sail my wheelchair through the course their recent occupants had laid.

My colleagues were no better.  They stood likewise and with nary a look back at what was preventing my motorized butt from keeping up.  They just danced they're serpentine do-si-do dance, weaving in an around the chairs as they made for the dance-hall exit.

As I approached each abandoned chair I had to stop, reach out with both hands to lift and shove the chrome and fabric monstrosities from my path and return them one by one to the table to which they belonged.  With order in my universe thus restored they could now be photographed for display in an Amazon sales ad and I could be on my way.

People, when you finish your lunch, don't leave your mess on the table for others to deal with.  Deposit it in the refuse receptacle provided.  Mothers using the drop-down baby change tables in public washrooms--return the table to the folded upright position so that it does not block by entry to the washroom.  Unless disabled, don't park in disabled parking spots (laziness is not a valid disability!)  And please people, put your chair back from where you got it even if there are no disabled persons in your workplace.  It is just common courtesy and do your mother proud.

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Lost & Found

About one year after receiving the Quantum Edge power wheelchair, I can say that I'm quite pleased with the model.  It is certainly a vast improvement over the disastrous Permobil M300 which was in-operational more often than not.

Plastic!  I am no fan of plastic.  Oh, it's a fine product but is used in the wrong place--as a wrong material, perhaps 90% of the time.  Why?  Because it is cheap--yet the savings are not pass onto the consumer but are hoarded by the manufacturer and/or vendor.  Overall, plastic is less durable over time, immediately more fragile and subject to ultra-violet (sunlight) deterioration than comparable light-weight metals--just to name a few properties.

Wheelchair manufacturers use plastic over light-weight metals now more than ever citing cost and weight as justification.  I believe profit is the only motivating factor.

Several months ago, I pulled up to my bedside with the intent to transfer.  As the power-chair approached, the left front caster arm grazed the metal bed frame which just happened to be at the appropriate height to pop the plastic cap to the caster pillar like a bottle-opener to a bottle cap.  Off it flew.  I could hear it pop but I could not tell to where it flew.

So I retrieve a mop and sweep under the bed.  Nothing.  I check the other side of the room--perhaps it rolled in the opposite direction.  Nope.  Under the book case?  Nada.  Ah-ha! I won't get fooled.  It had to have flung back into the wheelchair itself.  I retrieve a flashlight and prod all the nooks and crannies with a narrow ruler.  I can't pick the power-chair up and shake it out.  It doesn't appear to be on the chair or foot rest.  I'm perplexed!

That plastic cap had been attached to the caster pillar or post by friction.  The cap is manufactured with a lip, perhaps one-sixty-fourth of an inch smaller than the diameter of the pillar or post onto which it fits.  The assembler places the cap onto the pillar and with a slap of a closed fist or rubber mallet, drives the cap home.  The trouble is that an equal and opposite force just as easily removes the cap as there are no threads or set-screws to secure it to where it has been placed.

After weeks of scratching my head and wondering where the plastic cap had  gone, I gave up.  Perhaps it now resides with Jimmy Hoffa as the concrete foundation of a high-rise or with Amelia Earhart someplace off the coast of the Howland Islands.  Maybe its with the Amber Room and other lost Nazi plunder.  A black hole may have momentarily opened up in my bedroom and drawn the cap into its singularity, never to be seen again.  But life goes on as house-dust, saw-dust, garden leaves and other life's refuse gathers in the cup to keep the caster's retaining nut company the same as the lint which must accumulate in a vagrant's navel.  The "spontaneous breaking of symmetry" as a quantum physicist may note.  I hate that the left side looks different than the right even more than having use forceps, a vacuum or whatever, to keep the dust and detritus from accumulating.

Now this 2-inch diameter plastic cap might have been manufactured with a thimble-full of molten recycled plastic costing one-one hundredth of a penny for material and labour -- plus shipping and handling, for of course we all know from endless commercials that shipping and handling are extra.  Yet I'm certain should I order a replacement, I would be charged perhaps $25.00 for the opportunity to lose it a second time.

So what happened to that cap?  Over the next few months I would find a curious and unidentifiable dark gray-coloured piece of plastic here or there in my travels.  On four largely separate times, the chair suddenly jolted to a stop with a chair icon flashing on my controller--twice forward twice backward.  I still didn't clue in.  Then I found the major segment which comprised the top of the cap--well chewed as if a salivating puppy had found a new play-toy.

The cap had in fact flown back into some dark crevice in the chair and resided there for some time until through bumps and jostles it worked its was down to some hidden [from me] but exposed drive-gear mechanism where it would be periodically fed to the grinding teeth.

So now the chair grins back at me like some boxer who has lost a tooth.  It mocks me in knowing I was outsmarted by a wheelchair...

Just a few of the pieces of the cap left like bread-crumbs leading me to the answer of what happened to my caster cap.

One can see that the cap which covers the top of the caster is missing on the caster pillar seen at the right of this photo.  It covers a large retaining nut which holds the post around which the caster swivels.  Not just for aesthetics, the cap keeps foreign materials and moisture from the nut so the swiveling action is not impeded.

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