Image25: The Van
Back To: The Tyranny of Materiality
The
first day! April 1997: G and I lived in Selkirk dealing with Ron
Cross the slumlord . . . I obtained the van through a Plan to Achieve Self
Support [PASS] through the Social
Security Administration that began in November 1993 . . . what a convoluted
process! [I will [shortly] create a separate section dedicated solely to
the PASS and my experiences.] VESID
funded the modifications, approximately $18,000 . . . Vantage modified the van in
January 29, 1998: I left my Gender, Race and Class class, got into the van and went through my typical pre-taking off checklist . . . when I shifted from Park into Reverse the van rapidly accelerated . . . nothing happened when I pushed the brakes . . . the van stopped when it slammed into the Education Building . . . Craig's funeral was the week before . . .
Unfortunately, Doug Post, the Body Shop Manager [he has since vacated the position] did not take me seriously regarding the circumstances I described: Are you sure you were pressing the brake and not the gas? I wonder what the biggest factor was: being a woman or being disabled, though I bet it was both . . . the van has a computer that stores "codes" . . . these codes clear after the van is started a certain amount of times [5 or so?] . . . in August I discovered that I could request an Independent Investigation, which I did . . . of course it was eight months later so we found nothing . . .
Brandee was on the back seat, a few feet from the impact . . . the van hit the building so hard that it bent the driver's seat back at least five inches . . . since I was wearing a chest strap [for stability] and the seat belt, my body was held quite well though since the trunk of my body was secured, my neck really flopped around . . . I wouldn't go to the hospital because I spent hours there earlier in the day waiting to have a Plastics Resident look at a Second Degree Burn on my left pinkie / ring finger . . . the hot water heater was turned up too high and since I can't feel those fingers they got burned when I rinsed out my leg bag . . .
Not too bad from this angle . . .