I am already feeling bad, just tired and a bit glum. I thought getting up early and getting out of the house would help. So I decide to scoot down to the local café. It’s a route I’m familiar with and I know the bumps on the footpath to dodge to make the trip easier. Eager for coffee I switch the vehicle onto high speed (still turtle slow) and fly down the hill. Gliding. Feeling so free. It’s a sunny day, things are looking good. However, half way between my home and the café I hear a huge crash behind me. I stop still, the brakes work spontaneously, unlike when my brain instructs my body to move – a delayed awkward jerky response. So I’m stopped but I turn my head and see my walking frame lying on its side, almost in fetal position. The black iron bracket that normally is secured onto the back of my scooter is lying with it- It’s snapped.  Without my frame I’m stranded on my scooter. I just peer at it in disbelief. I can’t even reach it to pick it up. Onlooking commuters stare. I’m glad I can’t see their looks (combo of their dirty windows and my bad vision) but I can sense them. I hate to think what their saying. I guess at least they’re  entertained while they sit in bumper to bumper traffic.

A man walking his little Dog stops behind me and whilst marching on the spot, as not to lower his heart rate, stares at the frame and scratches his head.

“Oh Dear….Oh….What happened?” he asks perplexed

I wasn’t sure. I shrug my shoulders.

“It’s snapped!” he said, proceeding to go into fix it mode and securing the black strong iron bracket with a green recycled flimsy dog poo bag. Although I am  appreciative of his help but knew that it wouldn’t hold.

To cut a long story short the man carried my frame like a folded newspaper under his right arm to my local café. I scoot separately and then once he arrives, offer him a coffee (secretly glad when he declines as I have lots of work to do) and go inside like it was a regular morning.

“Hi Em, how are you today” the waiter asks…”Same coffee as usual” He continues

Yep” I reply, wishing that my morning had been as ‘normal’ as my coffee.   From the chaos in the café of other coffee deprived people, I sense that explaining why my day hadn’t started well was pointless. It was a rhetorical question. I swallow my tears and take a shallow breath, sitting in my ‘usual’ spot.

My mind is in fast forward with questions, “How will I get home? How do you get a welder? Do they exist in the city? Who can I call?

I text my mum in Castlemaine, “Know a welder?” I pose.

It’s times like this that we do want to just cry and position ourselves in a question-mark-like shape  as if to say “Why Me?”.  However, this happens to us all. Remembering that we can choose to let this be a freak event or dramatise it to impact the remainder of our day. Take control over your emotions and remember that things like this happen to us all, we are not alone.