TRUE: Many aging Americans live alone with cognitive impairment.

Last year I was pulling out of my dry cleaner’s, which is in a strip mall between a Kroger and an apartment building where a lot of old people live, and there was a guy in an electric scooter who was stuck. He was headed uphill in the parking lot, and his scooter had jammed up on a rain-deflector ridge and wouldn’t move. He had several bags of groceries in the baskets. The motor wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t really explain to me what was going on, but I figured out that he had tried to power over the bump until some sort of burnout-protection thing had stopped the motor. I turned the scooter off and back on, then pushed it over the bump and he was able to cruise on home. I followed him until he reached his building’s parking lot.

Maybe that guy should have been in some sort of assisted living facility, but he was shopping for himself and (mostly) getting around on his own. Is that bad? I’m not sure.