A Different Set Of Wheels

  One day I was watching my brother work on his bike. He was changing the tires and as he took the old ones off I began to muse about my wheelchair's tires. The wheels of my chair never needed to be changed, because they weren't inflated. At the time I didn't know how they always stayed intact, but I'd never really thought about it before.

"Suppose those bike tires would work for my wheelchair?" I wondered aloud.

"Maybe," he answered, looking up. "Wanna try it?"

"Sure," I said.

  My brother stopped what he as doing and came over to examine my wheelchair.

"Get up and let me see if I can put my tires on it," he instructed.

  I got out of my wheelchair and sat on the grass. He set to work. First, he took the tires off of my wheelchair and examined them.

"Are you going to try and put them on your bike?" I asked.

"Can't," he answered. "It doesn't have an opening for a pin that will go all the way through." He showed me the covered clip.

"So then the bike tires won't work?" I queried.

"I might can get them to," my brother responded. In other words, challenged accepted.

  My brother laid the wheelchair on it's side. He put a pin in and placed the tire on. After the pin was through, he secured each side with a lug nut. He lay the wheelchair on it's other side and repeated the process. When he was done he stood the wheelchair upright. It was a weird sight. The wheelchair looked taller, but somehow more impractical...

"Something is wrong, it's missing..."

"Hand rails." My brother finished my thought. "Yeah, you'd have to push these tires," he smirked.

  I'd only recently learned how to use the handrails on my manual wheelchair. When I first got my wheelchair, my arms were too short and I couldn't reach the rails. Two years later my arms were finally long enough, but my parents had a difficult time getting me to stop pushing the wheelchair using my 'dirty' tires.

"Can I sit in it now?" I asked my brother.

"Let me test it first," he said, ever the protector.

  My brother got into the wheelchair and immediately we both realized how unstable it was. He tried to push himself forward, but the lug nut and pin slipped on the right tire, which fell off. My brother jumped up before the wheelchair could take him down with it.

"Well that was a bust," he said, annoyed. He put my wheelchair tires back on and I got in it.

"Sorry it didn't work," he said. "At least you'll never have a flat." He set back to working on his bike.

"I wonder why that is." I mused.

"I'm not answering that question." My brother replied, not looking up from his work.