WHAT AN EXPENSIVE HOBBY DISABILITY IS

03.08.04


My car is not officially lisenced for a disabled user. We have one like that but my parents drive it for the last 10 years – that is way before I learn how to drive. Consequently, it is neither automatic nor does it have accelerator and brakes at hand. We could declassify it and declare my car as, the one, officially lisenced for a disabled user but I didn’t want my first car to be a huge one. I wanted a small car so as to experiment until I could say that I am cool with driving. So would it seem smart to exercise the right of owning such a car and buy a Yaris? I don’t think so. Let’s just say that I will do this with my next car, which will be a polymorphous one like the Renault Scenic or the Renault Megane. Now here are the most important reasons: I will buy a car on the condition that my parents will drive it as well (they gave the previous one as a deposit to buy the new one). This means that any changes I will do in the car will have to serve me but not deter my parents from driving; so, even if I bought a polymorphous one (which is way more expensive than a Yaris but I would have to pay for it all by myself since there would be no money from mom and dad), I would not be able to take out the driver’s seat completely (assuming that I would enter the car from the back opening, let’s say, on the wheelchair, by use of some kind of board), because my parents would have to sit as well on the wheelchair in order to drive it (!!!!).

Furthermore, when I asked for the prices of electric and not manually operating boards, I was told that I would have to pay about 2940 Euros! (I asked at a lot of places and not just one).

Conclusion? Apart from virtue and daring, disability needs money. Money that you don’t have when you are about 24 years old. I have the daring. I can acquire the virtue. Nonetheless, I think that it’s absolutely normal to be frightened, since I was growing up under my parents’ guidance until ‘yesterday’.