Zia's speech

A few weeks ago, Zia L. made an impactful speech during our Toastmaster session. He thought submitting it to the blog would be a great way to reach out to a wider audience. Here is the speech in its entirety:

"After five and a half years of inconsistent driving, my upcoming wheelchair promised a new beginning. The original problem was created when I bought my initial wheelchair with the belief that all wheelchairs were the same. Never again will I make that mistake. My new beginning was already on its way, and now only moments from being delivered to me. After learning of my wheelchair's whereabouts I hung-up the phone, when hearing a knocking on the door. When answering that door, a man stood displaying my shining new military green electric wheelchair. I was relieved because they had gotten the colour right. After all, green is my favourite colour, but not just any shade, the exact shade that this wheelchair was painted in. As a good will gesture they also included a few extras like a cup holder, a light for nighttime driving and a golf ball on the joystick. This was the perfect medicine I now needed. A closer inspection of my new wheelchair revealed its ability to now more easily change speeds. Changing speeds before meant a production of stopping on the sidewalk, shifting gears, then fiddling to turn a dial just to reach a desired speed. Now though, with a simple push of a button I happily glide through the intersection. Often times with that original process taking too long, even patient pedestrians would hurry past me while keeping from making eye contact with me. A second useful feature in nearly every situation I encounter is an ability to now make sharper turns. When asked to maneuver on wheeltrans that feature is especially handy and ideal for keeping everybody safe and free from worry. When the powers that be at wheeltrans decide to send you an accessible minivan there exists the likelihood of sharing the passenger space with one or maybe even two additional passengers. A different challenge then emerges. The challenge now becomes navigating to a desired spot instructed to by the driver, without offending another passenger. Sometimes I even ask the driver if another passenger is to be picked-up so I can better position myself, but an answer doesn't always follow. On those occasions of silence I believe that this particular minivan driver is too busy to answer or lacks the necessary customer service skills. The final aspect that I'd like to make mention of is my newfound ability to depart a crowd even when surrounded by customers at the cashier. My existing wheelchair isn't solely to blame for my shaky driving but had some of these new features been on that wheelchair then maybe I would think differently."

Thank you and great job on the awesome speech!

Here is Zia L. on his new wheelchair