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| Special thanks to my pal and gifted artist, Anwar Hanano for recreating this epic moment for me. |
When we moved up to PA in 1994, we had arranged to rent a trailer in Sunbury under the premise that the landlord would build a ramp or provide a lift to help my father get in and out of the trailer safely. For as long as I can remember, my dad's primary means of getting in and out of elevated spaces (especially our van) was a pair of 6' long aluminum ramps. Prior to moving to Pennsylvania, we had gotten used to the fact that they would become a bit slippery in the rain. What we hadn't experienced yet was how impossibly slick they got when exposed to snow.
The process of unloading my dad from the van usually went something like this: Set the ramps up with one end on the ground and the other end in the van. Walk up the ramps to grab my dad's chair, and guide him backwards while walking back down the ramps. Once he started down the ramps, he couldn't stop. Otherwise, his momentum would kick out one or both of the ramps, dropping everyone to the ground backwards and head-first. Standing on the ramps helped keep them in place, but safety was never guaranteed. He must have fallen literally dozens of times. Now, imagine walking up those ramps with snow-covered boots for the first time. "Slippery" is an understatement. Fortunately, I planted my chest instead of my face into them when I fell. Shockingly, this only happened once. This was the means we used, in the snow, to get in and out of the trailer while waiting for our landlord to follow-through on his promise to build a safe, permanent ramp.
My dad tolerated only one fall from the trailer before he began to threaten our landlord with a lawsuit. The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the early 90's, and my father was keenly aware of its provisions for accessibility requirements. Our landlord dismissed him with empty promises for weeks. That's when he took things into his own hands, and his litigious threat became real...
He told my sister and I that he was going to have a bad accident, and that we'd get our payday, get a permanent ramp, or both. He said it might hurt, but it would be worth it in the end. I have to admit that at the time, "sticking it to the man" seemed like an exciting idea. It was easy to villainize our landlord after watching my dad's head bounce off of our concrete sidewalk the first time he fell backwards out of the trailer. Dad's plan was simple. We'd stage a fall, call 911, and let the lawyers handle the rest. Unfortunately, he said our injuries needed to look real...and my dad was an "all-in" kinda' guy!
He said I was going to have to hit him in the face. We needed it to look like his face hit the ground, hard. I laughed. He looked like he was serious. We had an old heavy dictionary in our living room. It was about 3" thick and had a coarse canvas cover on it. He told me to pick up the dictionary and hit him in the face with it. I laughed again. Surely he wasn't serious. He braced himself in his chair and said again "Do it!" I nervously picked up the dictionary and stood in front of him. "How hard?", I asked. He said "Hit me in the face...as hard as you can." Confused, I gave a reluctant, half-hearted swing that was apparently just enough to make him flip out. "Damn it Dave, Hit me like you mean it!", he said. I protested again "No, I don't want to hurt you!". I started to cry. He yelled louder. I refused. He started slinging insults and profanity. At some point in the heated exchange, the word "numbnuts" came out of his mouth. For some reason, being called "numbnuts" always pushed my buttons, and he knew it. Something inside me snapped. I lost control. Everything went silent. I stepped into it and laid him out. CRACK! He went limp and slumped over in his chair. My eyes widened. My sister screamed. Seconds later, life began to return to his body. As he licked his lips, one of his eyes opened, and he said in a rather subdued tone "Yeah, that...that's what I'm talking about." Then he looked at my sister, slowly nodded, and said "Now". I thought "Now? Now what?" I turned to my sister, and before I realized she was holding my aluminum baseball bat, she dropped me with a direct hit to the inside of my knee. I fell to the floor. For a moment, it was excruciating, but the pain was quickly replaced with numbness and swelling. The part of his plan that he hadn't told me about was that he and his chair would be falling on top of me. He must have known I'd never volunteer for that part, so he had his own arrangement with my sister to follow-up with the bat on his command. There was still one more step we needed to complete to prepare for the fall. He thought that it would legitimize our plan even more if his wheelchair batteries leaked some of their acid on me while we awaited the ambulance, so he had me loosen the caps on one of them to ensure the leak. He had me tear one of the legs of my jeans for good measure. We were a mess! My knee was now nearly the size of a softball, and my dad had a small open cut above his eye, in the center of a decent goose-egg from the dictionary. Now, we just needed him to fall on top of me. Based on past accidents, this should be the easy part. I backed my dad about halfway down the ramps, and he came to an abrupt stop. Nothing happened. Of all the times for the ramps to NOT kick out, of course this had to be one of them. My dad, being the quick thinker that he is, told me to lift up one side of his chair so that my sister could kick the ramp out from under him. I gave it everything I had, which apparently was just enough as my sister kicked out the ramp. My dad and his chair instantly dropped on top of me, trapping my leg underneath the chair. The fall hurt more than I thought it would. It took maybe 30 seconds for the acid to reach my leg. At first, I just felt wetness wicking up my pant leg. Then it reached a cut that I must've sustained in the fall. My GOD it burned! My sister placed the call, and the ambulance was on the way. It was then, trapped under my dad's chair with a busted knee, soaked in battery acid, that I thought "What if this doesn't work?".
The ambulance showed up and "rescued" us. I remember having my jeans cut off of me in transit to the hospital. It was a bit humiliating. Remember that thing your mom probably told you about clean underwear? It's good advice. They asked what happened, and I gave them the rehearsed version of the story: "We were coming out of the trailer, he fell on top of me, blah, blah, blah". They seemed skeptical, but I was probably just paranoid. I mean, c'mon...they did just find me buried under this dude's wheelchair. We spent a few hours getting cleaned up in the ER before they released us both. After we got home, I spent another few hours cleaning up all of the spilled battery acid in and on my dad's chair.
Here's the best part...We never saw a cent or even went to court. Apparently, our landlord's lawyer had a bigger bark than ours. We did, however, convince him to finally put in a wheelchair lift for my dad as a safe way to get in and out of the trailer. We were evicted within a year. I suppose we deserved that.
Today, I'm actually glad that we ended up on the losing side of this one. Even though it was successful in getting the lift that we needed to safely get my dad in and out of the trailer, I think our true goal was really to make some much-needed money. Had we succeeded in suing the landlord, I may have started to think that this type of scheme was an effective way to make "easy" money later in life. Instead, we learned the hard way that it was the wrong way.
My dad did eventually learn to trust God with his life. I did too, and I'm so grateful to know that I don't have to dream up some elaborate scheme in order to get by. I still have to work hard, pray for guidance, and do the right thing, but trusting the Big Guy is miles better than the consequences of searching for an easier way at the expense of making bad decisions.
