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Dear Joan, I hate to have to admit this but I have been doing the wheel chair thing for over five years: it has been a funny (haha), a funny (strange) & a funny (choke back the tears) thing! When two of the guys from church pushed me thru the St. Louis Zoo-it was a riot-Mutt & Jeff meet the "woman in the iron chair!" But when my husband pushes me, it's a different story. At first he is so considerate & I feel so awkward that we kinda fall all ourselves being polite; "no dear I won't mind going to look at the stupid gun collection when there's a perfectly lovely doll house over in that part of the museum!" Soon after, we are no longer so polite & we find ourselves in this small power struggle, with him whizzing by stuff that I ordinarily would read! He's not unkind; he just can't be bothered but boy, can I be bothered. It's like turning over that part of your life over & having someone else run the whole show! But when I must use one of those motorized carts to get around a huge warehouse store like Sam's or Super- Walmart, I am brought nearly to the verge of tears by the looks that I get (those are supposed to be for old fat people!) or the grimaces as I drive into yet another display nearly make hobbling around on those concrete floors & spending the rest of the day on the couch seem like a reasonable option!...but somebody has to make dinner & finish laundry & help with homework so I figure that it's another one of those grin & bear it situations! With all the stresses we face each day just getting out of bed, getting going, getting something accomplished; I figure that I must use every trick in the book to help me stay productive & out there. I think that I'm so afraid that if I stop-I won't start again. And that thought scares the hell out of me. So Joan (great name,BTW), look at a wheelchair as a necessary annoyance if you can. I'm always telling the kids that this is an opportunity to tell God thank you for their strong little legs! -- --- Joan Snyder (47/8) "Do or do not. There is no try."Yoda [log in to unmask] htt://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/page1.htm