The Fargo Police department now has their police blotter online. The text at the top of this page is my entry from the day my car was broken into.

It may not be nearly as entertaining as The Arcata Eye, it's still a pleasant time-waster, especially just looking at the dispatcher shorthand in use: "M IS ON THE FLOOR SCREAMING AND YELLING BECAUSE HE IS UPSET WITH THE DOCTORS CUZ THEY PUT HIM ON THE WRONG MEDS. M DOES NOT HAVE ANY LEGS"

There's always this great divide between the handicapped and the "normal". It's notable to the police that the man is legless. But to the man it's just another day getting around in the way he's used to , which in the privacy of his home might mean a lot of crawling around on the floor. In John Hockenberry's memoir "Moving Violations--- War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence" he recounts the story of nearly being run over by a Chicago transit bus while crossing a street in his wheelchair. At the time Hockenberry has been paralised from the waist down for many years, it's a perfectly normal situation for him. He sees the bus rounding the corner when he's two thirds of the way across the cross walk.The speed of the bus shows that the driver is unaware of the wheelchair prescence in the intersection. So Hockenberry guns it for a few strong arm pushes and counts on his momentum to push him out of the wheelchair when he rams into the curb. It works: he goes flying out of the chair a moment before the bus slams into the (now empty) wheelchair. He's lying on the sidewalk, slightly bruised and says to the aghast crowd,"I'm perfectly fine, but my legs don't work at all."

--busmun, 12/24/2003 07:08:16