Worldly Wheelchair Outside Deli

Originally uploaded by thinklia

We were in Toronto to visit family who had just moved there from the Philippines. They bought a new house a month or so before our visit and were having a house blessing on this day. Mom and Dad and their friend (a flamboyantly gay, plump Filipino guy) had to stop to pick up lechon (a roasted pig) for the party.

My parents’ gay friend is from Toronto, so he rode in the car with us and served as the navigator. He directed us from the hotel to this place that sold lechon, but every time he called out a street name, he would jumble the name to make it sound ridiculously gay. This street was called Horner Avenue, but he kept referring to it as Horny Avenue.

So here we are at Horny Avenue, and while my mom and Jeng (that’s the gay guy’s name) went in to grab the lechon, I waited outside this strange deli and saw a motorized wheelchair moving itself really slowly. I never saw a person in it at all. And if you look closely, you won’t see a person either.

I ran around to it, and it had stopped moving, but this was so strange. If you needed a wheelchair to get around, why would you leave it outside? I was baffled. But anyway, the scene was weird, and it was already a weird morning, so I had to grab my camera out of the car and take this photo.

Now I’ll always remember the time we went to pick up lechon on Horny Avenue with Jeng and standing outside of an international deli watching a motorized wheelchair move itself.

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