I’m often too drunk to drive, which presents me with a real problem every time I finish another cask of wine; how do I get up to the bottle shop? Sure, I could walk, but that’s stupid, so I recently invested in a mobility scooter.
Yes, a mobility scooter, like the ones old people hoon around in. Well, they don’t really hoon, because these things max out at about 6km/h, but the one I’ve got provides a comfortable ride that is also very safe, due to the big fuck-off orange visibility flag on the back.
So I’ve been riding this thing around a lot lately, taking it to the bottle-o, taking it to the supermarket, doing doughies in car parks, that sorta stuff. And the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that when I’m seated in my mobility scooter, everyone’s really, really nice to me, because they all think I’m either physically or mentally handicapped. Sure, some people assumed that beforehand, but the scooter really sells it.
Normally I’ll walk along the street and people won’t even look at me (I give off a bit of a bad-arse, devil-may-care vibe, so they’re just doing the safe thing), but when I’m in the scooter everyone wants to say hello. They say it slowly because they assume I’ll have a hard time understanding a word with two syllables, but they’re lovely to me all the same. Strangers wave at me for no reason and I wave back with a big, cheesy smile spread across my face.
Yesterday I was tootling along past a family who were enjoying a picnic, and they called me over to have a couple of sausages, with a side of pumpkin salad and homemade quince chutney. I was pretty drunk at the time, so I was slurring my words and wobbling around like some sort of demented fish, which added to the image of me being differently-abled. They kept telling me how brave I am and I just nodded goofily, helping myself to another slice of garlic bread and pinching one of Dad’s craft beers. When I left they slipped a $20 note in my pocket, which I used to buy some wine.
While cruising down the chip aisle of Coles in my scooter, I nearly had an accident with a very fat lady who was also astride a fancy ride. She looked me and my scooter up down, coughed until she hocked up a golf ball-sized chunk of phlegm, then gave me her sexiest wink, which wasn’t too sexy at all. “I’ve got space for two scooters in front of my unit,” she said in a husky voice, and I backed out of there so fast I knocked over a standing display of Arnott’s Shapes.
I’ve even made friends with some of the fogies from the old-people’s home down the street. Most mornings we do laps of the local park in our scooters in what must look like the world’s slowest grand prix, and talk about lost love and why the young people of today are such fucking idiots. We’re like a car club, only our chariots cruise at the speed of a sausage dog and struggle to make it over cracks in the concrete.
I live an idyllic life of free sausages, sexual innuendo and heartfelt conversations Alzheimer’s sufferers, and it’s all because of my mobility scooter. Maybe I should get a colostomy bag next, everyone would love that…
The Drunk and Jobless World Tour 