Recalling My Very Wild and Unusual Attorney Swear In Ceremony

In every lifetime there are those moments or events where you just want everything to go perfectly as planned. These typically include things like graduation day, a first date with someone you’re crazy about, your marriage proposal, your wedding day, a job interview, a public speaking event, etc. For me, getting sworn in as an attorney was one of those big deal life events where I hoped things would fall right into place. Three years ago today, on December 11, 2007, I was sworn in as a licensed Minnesota attorney in front of the Minnesota Supreme Court. It was a proud day for both me and my family. Not only was it the culmination of four tough years of law school and the passing of the bar exam, but a pretty cool legal right of passage to boot.

But unfortunately having it all go off without a hitch wasn’t in the cards that day. Far from it as it were. Because when you live my lifestyle inexplicable and unexpected things related to my spinal cord injury and/or wheelchair tend to spring up at the most inopportune times. Thus December 11, 2007 became “one of those days” at the worst time possible.

The ceremony was scheduled to begin sharply at 3 pm in the main courtroom of the Minnesota Supreme Court building, which was pretty iconic stuff. I was actually supposed arrive at least fifteen minutes early to sign the requisite paperwork and get situated. The first mistake that I made was having my family drive past the court building in St. Paul to meet me at my apartment in Minneapolis first. I needed help with my suit and tie and they hit traffic, so we didn’t end up parking by the courthouse until 2:45 when I was already supposed to be inside. As a result, I was feeling really rushed.

On top of that I had never been to the Minnesota Supreme Court building before so I didn’t know where I was going or where the front entrance was. When you use a wheelchair and the overall accessibility of a building is in question a trick of the trade is to follow the blue wheelchair access/disability signs. Almost all of the time those signs lead the way to the wheelchair accessible entrance. So as I was hauling ass down the sidewalk of what turned out to be the side of the building I saw a disability access sign that pointed to a certain entrance. “This must be it,” I thought. As I approached it and hit the automatic door button nothing happened. We grabbed the handle to pull the door open and it was locked. Next to the door was one of those talk boxes with a red button. So I pushed the button, someone answered, and I said that I used a wheelchair and needed to get in but the door was locked. They buzzed me in. At the least, it was an annoyance that I could have done without on my way into the building.

Now at that point it didn’t make much sense that that was how I would have to enter the building to get to my ceremony. Why would I have to use a small side entrance that had its door locked during the middle of the day? But again, I was in a rush and I was going on past experience and instinct. After all, in the preceding eleven years of using a wheelchair (at that point) I’d already jumped through way crazier hoops just to enter buildings, and with that court building being a bit older it certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I needed to take an equally roundabout route. So I proceeded.

What made even less sense though was when I got inside the door and immediately found myself at the top of a staircase. “What the f---?” I thought to myself. I looked to my right and there was a wooden closet looking door with the disability access symbol on it so I opened it up to fund a metal dumbwaiter style elevator-lift big enough to fit one wheelchair. It was exactly like the kind I had to use in my university bookstore to get to the lower floor where the books actually were. I can’t begin to explain how hard it was trying to catch the eye of some college cuties when I had to get in a metal box that very obnoxiously went ZZZZZZZZGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH for a good thirty seconds before it reached the bottom, and vice versa. Very embarrassing.

Now at this point I definitely should have just turned around, gone back out the door I had just come through, and gone down the sidewalk again because there was no way that was the accessible entrance that would take me to the main courtroom of the Minnesota Supreme Court. And as it turns out it wasn’t. But fueled by the fact that I was running late and without giving it a second thought I launched myself into the “elevator,” closed the door behind me, and pressed the down button.

It was pretty much the instant that I hit the button that I had a “I probably shouldn’t be doing this” bad feeling, and sure enough the lift went down about four inches and crapped out. I hit the down button again, nothing. I hit the up button, nothing. Tried them both again, nothing. The emergency button didn’t work either. Great. Already late for what was arguably the biggest event of my life up until that point and I was stuck in some crappy elevator lift I should have known better to not even use in the first place.

Meanwhile, my family was on the floor below waiting for me to come down. Finally, my mom yells out something like, “Are you coming down or what?” I told her I was stuck. I think the response that came back was to try hitting the down button again. I yelled back that I was stuck stuck, as in no buttons worked and I couldn’t move. As everyone came back to the top to see the situation first hand I heard a lady walk in behind me and ask what was going on. My mom told her that I was stuck in the lift. Then she replied, “Oh that thing hasn’t worked for years” and went on her way. well for crying out loud, had ANYBODY thought about posting an “out of order’ sign or something? Unbelievable.

So my now brother-in-law went off to find some maintenance guy to help us and my dad went to let somebody in charge know that I was going to be a little late to the ceremony and to see if they could maybe hold things up for me given the unique circumstances. The longer I was stuck the more pissed off I got. Of all days to get stuck in a broken elevator lift was the one and only day that I would become an official lawyer. What were the odds?

After not too long a wait, albeit by the same token way longer than I’d hoped, the maintenance guy finally showed up. He reiterated that the lift had been broken for quite while. Thanks a pant load for the non-forewarning man! Since he couldn’t get it working again the only solution was to try and pull me out. I couldn’t back out because four inches is too high a threshold to wheel over going either frontwards or backwards with my chair. Also making it no small feat was the fact that my body weight plus my chair weight tops out at around 400 lbs. But between the two of them they were able to lift my back end high enough so I could control my back wheels to help get me back on level ground. Every fiber of my being wanted to bitch him out for not posting some sort of out of order sign, especially since his reaction to me more than implied that it was my fault for getting stuck in the first place, but more than anything I was just relieved to get out and I had to really get moving to get inside.

Down the sidewalk we went again. I got to the corner, hung a left, went about twenty more yards and, duh, there was the main entrance. My dad assured me that they were holding things up for me so that put me at ease a little bit, but my face was red from frustration, my shirt and tie were a little crooked, and in general I felt out of sorts. After I took a moment to straighten out and collect myself in what felt like the longest elevator ride up one floor in history I was finally outside the courtroom entrance.

As I rolled in the doors half embarrassed for being late and half relieved to finally have made it I found myself on the observation level of the courtroom while all the other soon-to-be attorneys attending the ceremony were down on the courtroom floor level. To get down there you had to go through a small swinging door and down a few stairs. So as it turned out although I finally made to the courtroom I still hadn’t actually made it. As all eyes were on me wondering what I was going to do next a courtroom shepherd asked me if I wanted to go down there to join the group. Relieved to finally be in the room but frustrated that the saga continued I said, “That’s ok.” But she assured me that it was just as easy as taking a ramp down the outside of the courtroom to get down there.

So I followed her to the left side of the courtroom where she held open a door for me, told me to go to the bottom of the ramp, and that she would go around and open it up for me. Then I sat there facing the closed door for who knows how long until I heard the door behind me open up again and a voice say, “I’m sorry, that’s not the right way, we actually have to go around to the other side.” Because there wasn’t enough room to turn my chair around I had to back all the way out instead.

As I followed her to the other side it started to feel like I was in the middle of one of those funny ha ha room to room chase sequences like you see on “Scooby Doo” or other similarly replicated comedy montages. By the time I popped out at the bottom of the ramp and entered the courtroom floor the Justice charged with swearing us in was in the middle of his “This is a time-honored profession…” speech. So I was already embarrassed interrupting things, especially with a loud puttering power wheelchair that makes a clickety clack noise whenever it goes in and out of gear. All the other new attorneys were sitting along the outer rim of the courtroom floor and the only spot available was on my end (thankfully) between a lady who pulled her chair over to clear me some room and the courtroom’s witness box. But in order to get myself into position I had to roll through a very tight space between the witness box and a brass bottomed flag stand, and as I squeezed through it my brand new rubber wheelchair tires let out a very loud and mortifying SSQQUUEEKK as they rubbed against the brass, which was essentially the cherry on top of an overall sundae of suck.

Once again I tried to collect myself as coolly and quickly as possible and tried to enjoy the rest of the ceremony as much as I could by putting all of the BS I had just gone through behind me. Obviously, it was a cool thing to be a part of and when I raised my hand and finally got sworn in as a real licensed Minnesota attorney it felt awesome.

After the ceremony everyone lined up to shake the Justice’s hand, chat with him, and get a picture. After everything that I had just been through I was pretty much ready to get the hell out of there and go to dinner, because I don’t remember desperately wanting a drink more at any point in my life. But my parents kind of insisted that we wait around and so we could get a picture with the Justice as well because it could be a something that I would regret not doing someday.

I’m glad I did too because I was last in line so I got some pretty unique one on one time with him. He was actually the Justice that came and spoke in my Criminal Procedure class the fall semester before. That night in class he pretended to punch me in the face while he lead a mini “What is justice?” lecture so I certainly didn’t forget him. When I reminded him of all that he claimed to have recognized me when I rolled into the courtroom. The thing I really thought was cool about him was that he got down on one knee so that he was more on my level to chat with me and take some pictures.

Then the unexpected occurred. With me that day were my parents, my sister, my now brother-in-law (aka my brolaw), and my baby nephew who was eight months old at the time. At some point in true father/grandfather’s pride fashion my dad mentioned to the Justice that my nephew had my name for his middle name. So after that the Justice kept referring to my nephew as “little Shawn.” Then out of nowhere he said, “You know what would make a great picture? If you took little Shawn up above and set him on the court bench.” So my sister and brolaw took my nephew around and sat him down on that Justice’s spot on the supreme court bench and we took a few pictures. Being a Minnesota law historian he then declared that my nephew was the first baby in the history of the Minnesota Supreme Court to sit on the bench. It was pretty awesome. And as it turned out it ended up being a pretty unique and fitting postscript to the whole crazy event.

So as much as I try to plan ahead and play all the angles to prevent wild things from happening, a lot of times the unexpected still wins out and it can be downright tumultuous like it was in this case. But in the end all that matters is that I survived the crappy elevator fiasco, I made it inside for the ceremony better late than never, I still became an officially licensed Minnesota attorney, and in the process we made a little bit of Minnesota Supreme Court history as well. And ultimately, I have a much better story to tell because of it. It also goes without saying that I might not ever be able to look at my attorney’s license card or see the words “Minnesota Supreme Court” and not think about that day.

One Man's Annoying / Aggravating / Interesting Access Picture of the Week

If someone in a wheelchair just needed to get to the bottom stair then this would be a kick-ass ramp. But getting the rest of the way up the stairs? Well, that's another issue.

One Man's Annoying / Aggravating / Interesting Access Picture of the Week

Got this from a friend. Another picture that requires little commentary. So ignorant it's comical.

One Man's Annoying/Aggravating/Interesting Access Picture of the Week

This week's pics come courtesy of another blog called BeehiveHairdresser. I've never visited their site before today but I saw a Twitter post linking to the "Wheelchair Ramp of Death" and, of course, got highly intrigued. The pictures show a blacktop ramp that makes a sidewalk accessible from the street. Curiously, the ramp is located about twenty feet from the street corner right in front of an on street parking spot. So the "of death" aspect refers to the fact that the bottom of the ramp leads a wheelchair user out into oncoming traffic. Their post dishes more on the details so I will defer to them at this point. For the record, on it's face their comment about the ramp of death "weeding out the population of persons in wheelchairs who are dimwitted" is offensive to many people in wheelchairs, but I myself took it for the sense of humor in which it was no doubt intended.

Check out the Wheelchair Ramp of Death here.

One Man's Annoying/Aggravating/Interesting Access Picture of the Week

Oddly enough, this week’s pictures come from none other than my own parent’s home in Eau Claire. What you’re looking at specifically (further below) is the ramp hallway that goes from my room to the garage, at some point dubbed “the tunnel.” After my diving accident my parents added on a wing to our house that became my new, fully accessible bedroom, which included a private bathroom, a small office area, my own accessible doorway to our back deck, and that ramp.

Since at the time of my accident my room was in the basement, gaining near full accessibility downstairs would have meant cutting some nasty hole into the upper level floor somewhere to install an elevator, putting in much less aesthetically pleasing, dense industrial carpet that’s easy to roll over, and completely gutting parts of my room, our storeroom, and the bathroom to make it all work. In retrospect we clearly made the right decision.

The ramp itself runs the length of the backside of our garage and comes out into a separate garage that was also added on for my near-exclusive use. Clearly, it all made my ability to come and go pretty seamless. Not to mention private and quiet from my parent’s ears on nights that I came home late.

Between 2003, when I moved out of the house to start law school, and now the ramp has taken on bit of a new life of its own in three respects. First, in December of 2003 my parents got two cats and they love spending time out there. It gives them about a half dozen windows at their height to look out into the side yard and a warm sunny place to nap. It’s not an uncommon sight to see them clawing at the door to be let out there.

Second, it’s becoming an intriguing playroom for my niece and nephew, 2.5 and 1.5 years old, respectively. They just love simply running up and down the ramp for two reasons that I can figure: 1) little kids just love ramps for some reason, they go nuts for my van ramp too, and 2) the ramp was built on a triangular box and the floor is hollow under the plywood, so every step they take sort of makes a hollow thud noise they love hearing. And starting this past winter my nephew goes nuts for watering the plants out there. I assume that my niece will see that and want to join in soon as well. Which leads me to...

Third, and coming back around to the point, over the last three winters my mom has stashed a lot of her outside potted plants in there. My room and ramp are heated with thermal heating via hot water coils in the floor and the ramp itself is kept at 45 degrees throughout the winter, so between the in-floor heat and outside light that beams through the windows my mom treats it as her de facto winter greenhouse for about four months.

Once she puts her plants in there it cuts the open ramp space down by about third. Technically I think I only need about half the ramp space so that's fine, but it plays tricks with my mind because I don't want to damage the plants. That said, I make my ingress and egress a little bit slower because I want to be extra conscious of not driving over leaves and vines while also not over compensating by running into the wall. I usually rake the back of one of my hands or stick out my elbows like a rudder to run along the wall as I go so I know not to move over any farther than is necessary.

But this year my mom must have been hitting the Miracle Gro extra hard because all the plants are especially extra poofy. I still have enough room on the whole but I’m afraid that I might do some pretty decent damage to her precious plants by the time the ground freeze period is over next April, which would make me feel bad. “Just smash them down, who cares?” she told me Friday night when I paused after I turned the corner and saw that I was dealing with a much wilder kingdom than I had in the past. Easier said than done. I tried that same thing last year and my front wheels flipped over a plant pot in front of me and I got stuck for about ten minutes. I couldn’t back up because one of our cats wouldn’t move and I had a basket on my lap so I couldn’t bend down and smack the plant aside. I could have just driven over it I suppose but I try to defer to them as much as I can since I think some of those things predate me.

Did I mention that the tunnel is so well insulated because of residential disability fireproofing laws that it’s virtually soundproof? It’s a good thing when I’ve come home from the bars, etc. with some rowdy friends, not so much when you’re trying to yell for help. After wondering where I went my mom finally emerged and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I tipped over one of the plants and it blocked my path.”

I love my mom with all my heart and it's only in good clean fun that I call her out on my blog a little. Truth is that it's only a little annoying, and even mostly creatively cute that she uses that space for the plants. After all, I'm not there too much in the winter anyway. And she always goes out of her way to move plants around so that I can get in and out as easily as possible. My personal accessibility has always been at the forefront of my parent's thinking. I just thought this would be a fun departure from my other documented access issues.

For the record, she wanted me to very clearly point out that she’s a plant lover and doesn’t want plants she’s had for years to die in the cold, and also that she deserves a pass because she’s doing her small part to oxygenate the planet. So because it is my mom let's just file this post much more under interesting, and maybe a little bit annoying, but definitely not aggravating by any means whatsoever.

So here’s to another winter of somewhat begrudgingly sharing my tunnel ramp with a crap load of plants, extra hallway oxygenation, and that robust, closed space, clingy earthy stink that almost makes you want to wash your hands and face by the time you’ve run the plant gauntlet.

Store workers build wheelchair ramp when customer's chair lift stolen

I just came across this story via one of my Twitter feeds and I had to share it here real quick. In short, it's about a lady who planned to move her brother, who suffered a stroke and had to use a wheelchair, into her home while he recovered. But shortly before he was discharged from the hospital their moveable wheelchair lift was stolen. (Who does that, seriously?) So she went to Home Depot to try and buy materials for a temporary ramp. After mentioning her issues to a few Home Depot workers, they offered to come over to take a few measurements in case they could help throw something makeshift together. Instead, and unbeknownst to her, they built her a full new ramp. A stunningly cool ramp, I might add, considering the impromptu planning involved. Just an incredible story and a great example of selfless generosity.

I myself have have had a few experiences with similar ramp building kindness. Of course, my parents built permanent access ramps for both their house and our lake cottage, but that was to be expected. But more specifically, one of my best friends built a pretty awesome, full length removeable ramp so that I can get in and out of his house pretty seamlessly. We still use it all the time, and in a lot of past instances he just left it down even during long periods of time when I was not scheduled to visit. And just a few summers ago, before my parents modified our cottage, our lake neighbor and family friend unexpectedly threw together a quick, temporay ramp in his workshop. It was very cool of him, and I used it that very day too because of an incoming rainstorm. In the past, by the time we got our other temporay ramps in place we were stuck in the rain a little bit. Thus, there were plenty of other times pre-permanent cottage ramps when the rain came in so fast and heavy that I just got in my van and waited the storm out there because it was the quicker and dryer option given the circumstances.

So I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for what those workers did for that lady and her brother. It was a very, very cool thing. Check it out, and enjoy!

Observations from Camp Randall: UW v. Fresno State 9/12/09

Other than the usual BS I encounter battling the masses of 80,000+ to and from the stadium I don’t have any Camp Randall observations to report this week that have to do with instances of accessible and disability dichotomies. I think that last week was unusual, even based on previous years of experiences, because I encountered so many in the same day. But going into a slightly different direction I am happy to share what was arguably the strangest encounter I’ve ever had leaving the stadium in eleven years of having season tickets.

To quickly set the stage, by the time the game hit the middle of the 4th quarter I started to get pretty hot, which meant that a cold drink was the best quick fix. But with only five minutes or so left in the game the kids that sell drinks had quit running around, and it’s not worth paying the $4 for a Coke at that point anyway. Ditto for the $4 water bottles of water they sell (ridiculous, don’t even get me started). Additionally, there are no water bubblers on my seat level and I sure as hell wasn’t about to go stick my mouth under a bathroom faucet that 1000’s of other fans had used all day. So I decided to just wait it out until we got back to my van. At that time it looked like we would be pulling out a tightly fought victory in mere minutes.

Well that had to be the day that we couldn’t close it out, Fresno state tied the game late, and on to overtime we went. By the time the team won in thrilling fashion after two full overtime periods about a half hour later I was in desperate need of a cool breeze and a chilled beverage. Because there was another big line for the elevator we just decided to take the ramps down instead. As I mentioned previously, I'm at a stage in my life where it’s worth waiting in line for the elevator to reduce wear and tear on my wheelchair. But on hot days like Saturday even waiting in line for more than a couple minutes gets me agitated because of the extra body heat floating around a closed area. Kind of makes my heat issues worse. At least when you take the ramps you often get a strong cross breeze, which was a welcome thing at that moment.

Of course that decision was proven to be a loser when we got caught in the crowd one ramp level down. The breeze was still welcome but the foot by foot slow trotting got frustrating because it gets hard on my chair – it’s either a lot of clicking in and out of gear or barely rolling which I assume gets hard on the drivetrain.

One ramp turn downward and I noticed another gentleman in a wheelchair coming down behind me on the ramp level just above. We exchanged a polite head nod, not unlike how my dad salutes fellow Harley dudes when he’s on his motorcycle. Behind him I noticed a woman in her mid 30’s on a blue scooter and thought nothing else of it. But with each ramp level we went down I noticed that she kept getting closer and closer. About halfway down she was a dozen and a half feet behind me on the same level, aggressively weaving her way through the throngs of people. Now I was trying to execute the same strategy, albeit much more politely, except I was stuck behind a group of senior citizens and was much more focused on not getting hit by the seat cushions they were swinging with each step.

The next thing I knew she was pretty close behind me. Another turn to the next ramp down and she was right on my hip. Barely worth giving a second thought to at first. Then it got weird. At the time I was towards the middle of the aisle but she started forcing me to the inside toward the wall so she had enough room to pass me on the outside. I tried to stay true to my current line but we almost banged wheels so I had to turn it in slightly to avoid collision. And so this went for a little while. Ridiculous. Not sure why passing me was so imperative. Proper etiquette in that situation typically dictates that you wait your turn. Instead she turned it into some wheelchair/scooter version of NASCAR. Which incidentally I can’t decide if it would be the kind of über lame sport you’d only see at 3am on ESPN2 after World’s Strongest Man or a YouTube nation ratings blitzkrieg. I'm inclined to lean toward the latter.

Anyway, we damn near trade paint for about a hundred more feet until she makes another series of aggressive moves and shoots her way past me and through the crowd in front of us. By the time I popped out at the bottom of the ramps I saw her across the way rolling full tilt, weaving through traffic, and cutting people off.

Bigger picture what this whole scenario did was further exacerbate this unspoken rivalry I feel like I’ve always had with scooter people. And my main premise for that rivalry can best be illustrated with a question/answer that I might have seen on my high school ACT exam: wheelchair is to permanent mode of disability mobility, as scooter is to mostly temporary mode of disability mobility.

Now that is not to insinuate that all scooter users have temporary disabilities because many folks do rely on scooters for their primary mobility purposes. But what I am saying is that in the vast, vast majority of instances where I have seen people in scooters they have pretty substantial use of their legs and can even walk certain distances without their scooter (e.g. a lady in my building used her scooter and mostly effortless walking ability interchangeably). People that have significant, permanent, physical disabilities that effect their every day all day ability to walk and move around are going to be seen using a wheelchair for their mobility device because wheelchairs have custom accessories (e.g. seat cushions, backrests, individual foot rests) designed to maintain all day support and body integrity. Most scooters I’ve seen come with a standard foam seat like you see on the captain’s chair on a pontoon boat, a flat floor surface for the feet, and steering handles. Everything about it screams ‘temporary ride.’

Now I have over thirteen years worth of experience in the disability world and thus a much more sophisticated eye when it comes to spotting the intricacies of other disabilities. So I could quickly assess that this particular scooter woman appeared to be mostly able-bodied due to the fact that she had full hand function and because one of her feet was casually cocked up on the right front of her scooter (i.e. she could move her legs). But I would venture to say that if your average person with no experience with disabilities whatsoever looked at me in my wheelchair and then another person in a scooter right next to me they would probably see that we both were sitting, we both weren’t walking, and we both were riding four wheeled mobility devices and they would no doubt just surmise that we both have the “same thing going on” disability-wise.

So when I see what under a pretty objective set circumstances appears to be a mostly able-bodied person on a scooter, coming from the wheelchair section, weaving people aggressively down the ramp, rudely saying ‘excuse me’ (she wasn’t but I’ve seen plenty of people do that before), forcing me inside so she can pass me, running full tilt with lots of people around, cutting people off, etc. and catching looks from “average” people that range from an eyebrow raise to an angry ‘what the heck?’ it always bothers me because I feel like she’s giving those of us with significant, permanent disabilities a bit of a bad wrap as well without being “qualified” to do so.

For the record, I do not subscribe to the tenets of this wheelchair-scooter rivalry alone. And according to a fellow quadriplegic blogger I follow occasionally I'm even involved in a quadriplegic-paraplegic rivalry I was previously unaware of (in short, they can grasp stuff with their hands, we cant; they can fully care for themselves, we can’t; we’re lazy because most of us use power chairs, they push themselves with manual chairs; etc.). But the bottom line is that as long as the “scooter chicks” of the world want to get all DAYS OF THUNDER on me as I leave the hallowed halls of Camp Randall Stadium, my place of personal catharsis and sanctitude, then the rivalry will continue to reign supreme!