As a single woman in an urban center with a disability,I find myself searching for many things. But I face one search that Carrie Bradshaw never had to stick in her MacBook: the search for the perfect wheelchair.

You'd think the dizzying array of choices available since the Everest & Jennings dominated eighties
.(weren't those colors awful? I had most of them, too: that sickening greenish-brown, the lackluster blue, the not-really red) the lighter materials, and the zippier styles would make Wheelchair Purchase angst a thing of the past

Maybe for some people. Maybe if you really do have an awesome doctor and a killer negotiation instinct, you can walk out, so to speak, with the mobility aid that serves your real needs. I've only seen that in the brochures. I get the one with the persistent flaws: brake bolts that continually loosen to the point that the concept "brake" is more of a social construct than a possibility,posture adjustments that offer free mammography as a gift with purchase, footplates that decide to leave to seek their fortunes, I've had them all.

Not in the same chair; that would cross over from "Gaslighting" to genuine consumer complaint.

Where is the fun in that? I think the wheelchair-purchase places think of "Spot the Imperfection" in rather the same spirit as restaurants who put the mazes to color on their menus. I can't prove it, though.

Maybe that would be less annoying if these companies took a sort of Checker Wheelchair Parts approach to replacing stuff and actually made it easy. Not only do you need a script to get your chair worked on, it's almost a rule that the actual place you take it will be far enough away that not only will you think of bringing your lunch, you'll toy briefly with the thought of a Sherpa guide. Maybe that's why I end up grinning-and bearing with wheelchair annoyances to almost postal-worker levels of aggravation

.

I know it's out there. Something that will give me mobility, let me sit comfortably, and maybe let me fit through a doorway or ten. Even though I'm older now, I still picture it glinting at me across a crowded showroom, even though I've packed away most of my girlish illusions with my high school yearbooks. I would say that my knees will get weak, but that's redundant, isn't it?

--Erika Jahneke