Wilt

[pitbulllady]

Originally Posted by WiltsAKGirl17

There was little doubt in my mind that drivers' license laws varied by the state. (Off-topic example: In Alaska, if you kill any big game, i.e. moose, with your car, it belongs to the state. I doubt that y'all have that problem in South Carolina?) I'm pretty sure that being blind in one eye actually means that 20% (one-fifth) of your visual capacity takes a hit-- not quite enough to totally disqualify you from driving I'm sure.



Maybe I was thinking of older cars with a stick shift and a clutch and all those other things that are about as foreign to me as fluent Klingon. (Again with the Star Trek references in a Foster's discussion... )

In South Carolina, if you hit a game animal, such as a deer or a wild turkey, with your car-aside from probably having your car totalled(and I don't even want to know what a moose would do to a vehicle)and possibly winding up in the hospital yourself, the meat is yours if you want it, or anyone else's who happens to come along. I've actually dressed and butchered a deer that was just hit by another driver on the side of the road; he didn't want the meat, so his loss was my gain, and the game warden and a highway patrolman were both standing right there. The game warden loaned me his knife since I can't carry one in my car, lest I get caught with it on school grounds, which is a felony. If no one had come up to collect the meat, the game warden would have taken it to the prison, where it would have been served to prisoners. In Georgia, right next door, if I'd done that, I would have been arrested and locked up for stealing! So yeah, those laws vary a lot, too.

Wilt would have some trouble with a modern stick shift car, since you have to shift gears with your right hand and steer with the left, but he'd probably be able to drive an older column-shift car, like my '51 Studebaker. The gear shifter is on the right side of the steering column, and an experienced driver can hold the steering wheel and shift with the fingers, especially someone with as large a hand as Wilt has! I can shift and steer with my right hand, so I know it wouldn't be an issue for Wilt at all. If you've got a good, smooth shift, it's no problem, and of course, an automatic would be easy for him as well. Also, on the older cars, the dimmer switch is located on the floorboard, and you operate that with your left foot, so the turn signal is the only thing that might prove to be a challenge for Wilt. He'd either have to bump it with his stump of an arm, which would mean leaning way forward, or have it moved to the right side, or have a set up in which that was controlled by a small foot control, too, like the dimmer switch. The teacher here in our district who has lost his left arm and eye used a foot switch for the dimmer(he drives a classic car, though, a '65 Ford Galaxie), and the car is automatic, and has the signal arm on the right side of the column. Wilt's already proven that he can drive, in a DeLorean and a commercial truck, as Mac-a-Lacka pointed out. Wilt just isn't one to sit around bemoaning why he can't do something that other folks would assume would be difficult or impossible for him to do-he just does whatever without worrying about the difficulty! Wilt definitely seems to be someone who responds best when challenged.

pitbulllady