The scooter is a blessing for shopping and visits to friends.
Getting a mobility scooter can be an adventure or one big headache. If you are the type of person who relishes homework before putting your dollars on the counter, you could be a long time doing so, and you and the salesman may be in need of more than a scooter by the time you have finished.
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If you are in the tribe my 90-year-old mother belongs to i.e. the impulse buying club, then prepare for some disastrous consequences, or ... it could go swimmingly just like her purchase did.
You will know when it is time for a scooter, depending on whether you are a maven - those who try out the latest 'thing' before anyone else - or a mouse.
My mother was always a maven, but a few face-plants in the garden and a stomping of cockroaches in the kitchen, caused broken bones in several strategic places which healed slowly. This made her move out of the armchair very reluctantly, and then only with the promise of a Devonshire tea afternoon ahead.
After her latest fall, the walker became her good mate, but she couldn't go far before being so puffed, she had to camp out on the footpath for a while, to get enough breath to struggle home again.
So her world and her confidence shrank. Not happy with that, she decided SOMETHING had to be done. Hence the mobility scooter. She wanted to buy one then and there.
Always careful with her dollars, we checked out the three mobilty places locally, and decided on a middle of the range scooter, one that couldn't quite sing and dance, but good enough. After all, as she said she a) may not take to it and b) might not live long enough to get the use out of it.
There was a pretty red one that took her eye and that would suit her fine she said. Did she want a trial run, perhaps a week's loan or even the opinion of a mobile scooter mechanic to check its credentials?
No way. She wanted to be able to drive it down to cards that afternoon. Money changed hands. The seller mumbled something about a new battery, the method of plugging it in, and how to work the accelerator.
Mum is very hard of hearing, but seemed to be keeping up with all his palaver. When the newly endowed chap handed us the keys and departed, mum asked what he had been blathering on about, and we had to go through all those instructions again slowly, and fortissimo.
With mum perched like a sparrow on it, the red terror is a fearsome sight as she barrels along. But it has been a blessing really as she now goes shopping and visits friends on it. The scooter climbs gutters and inclines easily, and has had a new battery and one service in five years. It's a trooper too.
