Last night, my son and I picked up some A&W. We chose to eat-in (my son LOVES to ring the bell when we leave). Our parking was a little bit strange (goes along with my NOT COOL Stuff #3). My car has a chair topper that houses my wheelchair on top of my car when I drive. An arm comes down and picks my chair up as I am seated in the drivers seat. My car is also equipped with hand controls. Upon getting into the car, we were able to get my chair topper in the down position and then it stopped working. It would not go up or down with the control switch. I imagine it was some sort of electrical short but I did what EVERYONE does in situations where they do not know what to do. I called my Mom. She was sick and could not help me. I had already called the after-hours emergency number and left a message. My Mom suggested calling AAA. I could not drive my car with the chair topper in the down position; I couldn’t even get out of the car. The chair topper didn’t allow me to get out of the car or to shut the door. I was listening to the automated list of what number to dial for AAA when I thought, they really can’t help me. My car is running. I just can’t get the chair topper to work.
Then I thought of a conversation I had with my brother this past summer who is a Sergent for the Detroit Police. He told me to “call the cops, they will come. You live in Dearborn.” So, I called the non-emergency phone number for the Dearborn Police. Two officers showed up and I explained that there is a manual way to engage the chair topper to close it up but I didn’t know how to do it. I called the after-hours number again. As these two officers were looking at the chair topper trying to figure it out, another car with two more officers pulled up.
One officer popped my hood because that was were the hand controls are routed through, another officer was google-ing how to work the chair topper manually on his phone, a third officer was shining his light into the chair topper trying to figure out how to work it. I wasn’t sure where the fourth officer was. I was sitting in the car with my heat blasting, not sure what to do for work the next day. The forth officer starts telling the other officers walking them through what to do. I turn my head and see that he is on the phone. It sounds like he is talking to someone who knows what to do. As he is about to hang up the phone, he asks if I got the modifications done to my car at Advantage Mobility. My eyes light up and I said “yes!” No wonder Arnie wasn’t answering my calls! He was talking to this police officer!
The officers were able to get my chair topper closed for me (my son had already stowed my chair in the trunk). And then we were good to go. As we drove away, I looked at my son and said, “It pays to live in Dearborn.” I have lived in Dearborn my entire life. My parents lived (and my Mom still lives) in East Dearborn. We moved into our first apartment when Sean was 3 also in Dearborn. When he was 5, we moved to a larger apartment in the same complex. We moved to our house in West Dearborn when he was 7. It’s times like this one when I am reminded why I truly enjoy living in Dearborn. But I think this whole ordeal happened because this is what I get for cheating! I’m not supposed to have root beer floats! (Even though it was really good).