I had my neighbor drive me down, and I rolled straight into the middle of that store, past the streamers and the radio remote, in my clean shirt.
The clerk saw me and shrugged, same as the day he told me all sales were final.
I did not cuss him out. I had a folder across my lap.
He had told me all sales final, that once the scooter left the store it stopped being their problem. And they had stopped answering the phone besides.
All sales final does not mean sold-you-junk final, I said, because the law says a thing you sell has to actually work at the thing it is for, and a scooter that quits in two weeks does not meet even that.
There is a rule the lawyers call the implied warranty of merchantability, and it is a mouthful, but it means something simple. When you sell a man a scooter, you are promising it will roll. A dead battery in two weeks breaks that promise, and no all-sales-final sign can sign that promise away in this state.
I had already filed in small claims court and taken the folder to consumer protection. And the shop that would not answer my phone calls answered a summons quick enough.
The radio remote was set up right there, and folks were listening, and I told them how a store had left an old man stuck in his own house over four thousand dollars.
A grand-reopening does not shine so bright after that.
They refunded every dollar rather than face a judge, and I took it to an honest medical supply shop that let me test three scooters up and down the aisle before I chose one.
I get myself to church now, and to the market, on my own again, which was the whole point.
The neighbor who used to push me home does not have to anymore. He rides his bicycle alongside me now instead, the two of us going down to the market like a couple of boys, taking our sweet time about it.
I will tell you what I learned, sitting stuck in my own front room for two weeks over four thousand dollars. A man can take your money, and a man can take your legs out from under you for a spell, but he cannot take your right to stand up for yourself, in a court or on a radio or in the middle of his own store.
That right is not for sale, and it is not final, and no sign on a wall can wave it away. I rolled out of that store proof of it, and I have been rolling free ever since.
I did not raise my voice. I rolled in calm, laid out the law, and rolled out with my money.
Have a blessed day, I told that clerk, on my way out the door under my own power.