(02/16/97)["Directing a children's play and it all goes wrong."] I have been hired by an elementary school to direct the children's play. I sit on a high shelf on the wall, with two pillows under my buns. They keep sliding because the shelf is slightly tilted toward the floor. So I fight to keep my balance. On my left sits a young student helper who keeps getting in my way. The two young actors, a girl and a boy keep doing the first few sentences over and over waiting for my directions, but I am too busy trying not to fall off my perch and I can't seem to keep the directors notebook open to the right pages. I am searching for the purple or salmon colored pages of this particular play and can't find them. I ask for help and an assistant brings me text books and copies of the script for the actors. There is a crowd of kids on the gym floor where we are rehearsing, the other class members waiting for their turn to act. Two other kids, teens, keep getting on the stage area and I ask who they are. I am told that they are helpers. So I let them stay. They are putting props on the stage. A bicycle and something else. Finally I am very uncomfortable physically on that perch and say that's it for the day. I ask a passing teacher to give me a hand down from the perch. She is reluctant, thinking it would be too much for her to do physically. The assistant comes and I tell her to stand to my left and I will slide down, using her for balance. We do that. I get into my wheelchair with a sigh of relief at being back home where it is comfortable for me. I drive through a hall and find the supply room. I request a grade book, a lesson plan book and look over the various types of stenographer tablets available. I am tired so decide to get what I need another day. I find the exit door and leave. Now I wonder if there is a bus out here, since the school is out on Highway 99. I look back at the school and notice a small apartment room on the side. I remember that Claude and his wife used to live here and for a moment I contemplate weather to visit them or not, but I am too tired. I'll do that another day. I roll on down the side of the highway and see a bus up ahead. I go there and it is a greyhound sort of bus, not a city bus. I look at the murals of trees and bill board signs they have under a long canopy as I drive by. I keep rolling, thinking at least the chair won't get tired, if I have to go all the way back without a bus. Now I see an intersection that looks familiar but only it is different than real life. It is the intersection of H. and highway 99, which doesn't really exist. I think it is odd. There is a sort of shopping mall there and big rolling hills of asphalt. I see a city bus in the distance and start toward it. A woman says you can't get there in your wheelchair. I say oh yes I can. I turn right to an accessible tunnel I remembered was there. I get to the bus, which has a very high step that requires a sort of box elevator. I am waiting for the box to come down to pick me up. The attendant seems surly and unhelpful. So I play around with the buttons which I discover send signals to the dolphins inside that power the elevator box. They are plodding along so I switch the digital signal to a Wave code, which is more jiving and jazzy. This makes the Dolphins happy. They come quickly to pick me up. But it annoys the attendant a great deal. He grumbles and I sarcastically say Oh yes. It will be on the nightly news. Maybe the Mike Douglas news show. Does Mike Douglas still have a show I ask. Yes sir, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer proudly presents me messing with the controls. OHH my!!