I Guess You Had To Be There

This needs to be told, but I have a funny feeling that it will be a long time before I find the incident humorous. Even the ones most injured at the time are laughing about it, but somehow I can't.
It started with the best of intentions. My wife's knee had been acting up and a Cortizone shot from her doctor only made things worse. On the day before we left on our journey, we had gone to an emergency clinic to get her knee drained and there was the question of having a vacation at all. She was determined, and that was how we happened to be leaving the Seattle airport with her in the wheelchair, piled high with our bags and me learning what it is like to be with a handicapped person. It was going to be a trip of riding in the car and looking for places without steps. That was okay and I seemed to be getting the hang of having to tilt the chair back to go over bumps. I miscalculated on one thing though. In order to save a little time and energy, I got us on a "people-mover" which is a long flat escalator kind of thing. About halfway down it, she turned and said, "I don't think you are supposed to have wheelchairs on these things." Panic started to well up in my head, but I looked ahead and saw the looming lip at the end of the mover. All I had to do was to tilt the chair way back and sort of pop a wheelie over the lip. I knew it could be done, if I could time it just right. Just like in the movies, time seemed to slow down. I watched the lip of the mover get closer and closer and tilted the chair back until the wheels were at least 2 inches in the air. The next step would be critical, but I hit the lip and instead the wheels froze as if the brake was on. There seemed to be a slight pause and the wheelchair went sideways, suitcases in the air and she pitched forward. I worried about her fall and the wheelchair for only a moment, and then I learned the next thing about people movers: Everything most go forward. I went on top of the wheelchair and her Mom and Dad went on top of that. I started to get up and then saw a crowd of people trying to walk backwards on the mover to get away from the pileup, and I scrambled to get our stuff out of the way. We were all stunned and folks were coming from everywhere to see if we were okay.
We survived it, and all that is left is a big black bruise on her Dad's leg and she is walking better than before we left on the trip. They are all laughing about the big adventure that started our trip, but to me it is one more reminder about how suddenly things can go very bad.