Mar 20

You can help someone who drew the short straw in life and provide a cart

By technologists

Maker of the Mobility Cart since 1994.
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Mobility Worldwide MO-Columbia update 3/20/18: 374 Mobility Carts built in 2018
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Some folks get the “short straw” in life, and I will never have an answer as to why. The short straw concept usually means getting the bad end of a deal. A dirty job needs to be done and some blades of grass or twigs from a tree are broken into long and short pieces, with only one short one. They are hidden in the hand of the person in charge, and everyone pulls out a piece. The one who gets the short straw does the dirty job. It is a simple lottery system, used in many ways.

It seems fair enough, in the situation at hand. But I frequently visit a woman who has for about half her life been severely incapacitated by an illness not of her choosing. She did not choose the short straw, it chose her. We talk about that, and I have no answer. She did not choose to draw out a straw, but in effect she did, by being born. We all do. I drew a long straw, and in my gratitude for that I must serve as best I can those who drew the short ones. She cannot be blamed for being one who drew the short straw, and I should not be acclaimed for being a long-straw person.

(Read how Ireen, who had polio as a youngster, used her cart to help others.)

Mel West

I find in my notes that about 19 years ago I wrote, about Mobility Worldwide, “It is not just, it is not right, it is not proper, that persons must crawl upon the ground for years, simply because they got polio, which they did not ask for, or stepped upon a landmine, which they did not plant. ” The Old Testament speaks of justice, and the New Testament speaks of love. Seeking justice we build our wheelchairs. They are built with love and distributed with love. That is the best answer, I think, to the question of “why?”
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“Let your love of justice be exceeded only by your love of mercy.” ?Anon.
Mel West, Director Emeritus
DBA Mobility Worldwide MO – Columbia