This article is classified "Real"
First Definition: "A wheelchair is a chair with wheels under it." Scholars debate this quite infrequently, usually over brunch, when they have nothing better to do. There are chairs made on the planet Earth with wheels on them, but they may or may not be wheelchairs. Many chairs with wheels on them are stationed at desks and allow the user to position him or herself closer to the desk or farther away without putting horrid scraping marks on the wooden floors, or wearing out the plush carpeting. These are known simply as desk chairs, even though they are chairs with wheels and therefore technically fall into the first definition of what a wheelchair is. Due to this fact, it is necessary to create the second definition of what a wheelchair is, otherwise known as the revised definition. Revised Definition: "A wheelchair is a chair with wheels under it that allows the user to transport his or herself from one place to another, regardless or whether or not an office desk happens to be within the vicinity at the time." An esteemed colleague of this author, named "Paco", has pointed out that the revised definition is still not completely definitive, so a revised revised definition has been formulated. Revised Revised Definition: "A wheelchair is a chair with wheels under it that allows the user to transport his or herself from one place to another, regardless or whether or not an office desk happens to be within the vicinity at the time, and is not an automobile, or similar motorized vehicle utilizing an internal combustion engine or having an upholstered interior." More specifically, the common wheelchair is a chair made from a metallic alloy, with a very uncomfortable seat (usually made out of leather but not necessarily so, and should not be confused with an upholstered interior) that necessitates the user to add some form of foam cushion to the back and buttocks. These devices often have foot rests, since the feet will most probably not be doing anything useful at the time the wheelchair itself is in use. Located below and to the left or right of the user's buttocks are two very large wheels with circular bars attached to make it easier for the user to push the wheels along without getting dark tire marks on the hands from the rubber outer edges of the wheels. Located to the left or right of the foot rests are two smaller wheels, thus making a proper wheelchair a four wheel drive. The common wheelchair is also rarely referred to as a manually operated wheelchair, which necessitates some form of human effort in order to move. If the user is tired of pushing him or herself by grabbing the two large wheels and moving them forward, he or she can try to con some unsuspecting dupe into grabbing hold of the two handles located just above the back of the wheelchair, and pushing the user around that way. The one who performs this action for the wheelchair user is usually either a friend, a nurse, an idiot, or some combination of all three. There has yet to be a form of manually operated wheelchair which is operated by pulling the user. These are referred to as rickshaws or something of that nature, and fall into a completely different jurisdiction, not covered in this entry. They would also be much more difficult to get through doorways, and it is unnecessary to create any item on the face of this reality more difficult to get through doorways than a wheelchair, so the concept is moot. Some modern wheelchairs are battery operated. These are known as battery-operated wheelchairs. Some also use the term self-propelled, but that suggests that the wheelchair does in fact have a sense of self. Until they are computer operated with voice integrated circuits and artificial intelligence capable of saying "I think therefore I am going to fail getting through the nearest doorway" and mean it, they have no sense of self and therefore cannot be self-propelled. If the user of the wheelchair had way too much chili, that would be a form of air combustion used as the mode of transport, and the term "user-propelled" would be useful here. Battery-operated wheelchairs usually have some sort of device that a part of the user's upper anatomy (preferably a hand, but when not feasible, the user's tongue is just as sufficient) to instruct the chair into moving forward, backward, or spin on its axis in feeble attempts to get through doorways. Battery-operated wheelchairs travel at a speed in excess of one mile every five weeks.