The event was an upscale, after work street party in a high rise business district.  Everyone was very well off, or at least knew how to look that way. The men were dressed sharply, behaved confidently.  The women were using their best attire, honed over the years, to work with their most desirable assets. Dresses and jewelry were simultaneously very professional and a little bit seductive.  Not a hair was out of place. This was clearly not a couples event. The individuals seemed to be interested in making connections, dating or otherwise, with the most desirable of the other individuals.

Each major human interest has its own group of regulars and it’s own generalized rules of what works and what does not.  Failure is sure to visit all participants that stray outside of these established boundaries unless, on a rare occasion, an individual piques people’s interests as being so tantalizing that the others want to be more like them.  This is a bold approach. It almost never works without a little star power to start with.

One of the unspoken rules is that these individuals have to team up with another member of the same sex in order to clear the first hurdle of proving that they are capable of having friends.  Your teammate in this situation is called your “wingman”. It works, but this causes a secondary problem similar to that experienced in bicycle racing. One must team up to compete against the others, but then, as one nears the finishing line, your teammates can turn into your competitor.  If the prey is plentiful enough, all fellow hunters are pretty relaxed. It can become a little more edgy in time of drought. Choosing one’s “wingman” for the evening weighs heavily on one’s success rate. It’s wise to have knowledge of your teammate’s finish line tendencies. Occasionally, an individual will try to use a gimmick, such as a puppy or baby.  This seldom works because it has “been done” and the target population knows of the end around.

This is where I come in… My long time friend, who is a major contender in this pursuit, had the brilliant idea of combining “wingman” with “gimmick”.  Perhaps an ALS patient in an electric wheelchair could just be that perfect bridge between the two strategies. I have nothing else to do this particular night and I also just received the full deal, quadriplegic wheelchair.  I agree to go. The only hitch is that mine wasn’t in yet so the company gave me a loner that said “DEMO” all over it. We weren’t too concerned because I wasn’t in the hunt anyway. During our evening, one of the most desirable specimens of the target community comes up to the two of us.  It becomes apparent that she is highly skilled in this ritual with just the right amount of being playful, flirtatious, pleasant yet vagueness of subject, and the perfect amount of intrigue and appearance of intelligence. The three of us talk for quite a while, but it appears that she is only interested in me. She is amazingly interested about my wheelchair too, along with a great number of other subjects.  It looks like my friend’s strategy has horribly gone awry. Then came the success that is so sought after, she actually gives me her number! A business card with her number on it! As she turns to go for the night, she tells me “I see that the chair is a demo.  My company is in selling these wheelchairs and I’ll bet I can give you a better deal and service than whoever is presently getting it for you.  Give me a call”. I turned to my friend with a contented smile, two thumbs up, and said to him “Ya, I still got it!”