I live in a house that has no rugs on the floors and no floor tile. The entire flooring is concrete. End-to-end. Add to that the fact that there are no steps, and the hallways are twice as wide as the normal home.
When we purchased the home, we thought that it was great for wheelchair access, if we ever needed it. My grandchildren thought otherwise. They had a very different mind-set on utilization of this space. Wheelchair access be damned. This was the perfect skating rink.
The main rink was the living room and 'extreme' skating occurred in the hallways, bedrooms, and bath. You could open all the doors (interior/exterior) and fly through the air from outside to inside and back out again.
All it needed was a little waltz music with thundering bass, and they could have been in Rockefeller Center on ice.
Whether I liked it or not, Roller Derby finally came to our house. Four or five kids on skates doing spins on the living room floor, then darting in and out of the bedrooms. Someone hiding in the closet, only to be found in a game of 'roller tag'.
It's not exactly what I envisioned in this home. When those kids arrive, it's as if the entire world of the home is transformed into that skating rink. And when they finally depart from the visit, the house reverts back almost instantaneously into a space that can accommodate a wheelchair. Not that I need one. I don't. And that's the rub. I don't now look at the home as 'wheelchair accessible'. Rather, I look at it as a place where these 'little people' can skate around their grandparents. Play tag, roller-derby, or double spin. Or hide in the closet.
These episodes offer new vision to 'graying hair' and bald spots. Instead of simply looking at the home as 'wheelchair accessible' I now see it as a roller skating sports complex. And the latter is so much better then the former in my mind.
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