University Of Hard Knocks
From our daughter, Little Red, I got “So, Dad, I guess you’re not gonna be driving the Jeep for a long time, huh? Maybe a whole semester? You know, cars need to be driven. It’s bad to just let ’em sit. You’ve said so yourself, right?” I might see my Jeep again around mid-June, slathered in caked mud and knee-deep in crumpled college papers, concealing a melted tube of crimson lipstick on the floorboard and half of a fuzzy mummified burrito under the driver’s seat. Been there, done that.
Uncle John’s been using one of these “lunar lander” walker-canes for some time, and he assured me I’m carrying on a fine family tradition.
“Some people,” he said, “Collect Bentley cars or bubble-gum cards. We collect shrapnel and spinal injuries.” I asked him for pointers on maneuvering with walker-canes.
“Nah,” he grunted. “I kinda enjoy watching you blunder around like a drunken buffalo — it’s cheap entertainment. And I know you, kid; you only learn the hard way.”
Oh, I’ve learned lotsa things. Like, never try to write on a laptop computer while you’re loopy from painkillers. First, your fingers do not respond well to the erratic, stuttering messages from your misfiring nerve synapses. No matter what you’re trying to write, it comes out resembling an optometrist’s eye test chart, like AOTE NYLIR OXTUM SWADLIK. Second, if the painkillers are strong enough, when you stare at what you’ve written, your drug-fogged brain says, Uhhh, hey; looks good to me, and you transmit it to your editor. He responds, asking if it’s in Finnish, Urdu, or Seminole. By that time you don’t know what he’s talking about, so you forget the whole thing and take a nap.
On Stairs: If you’re going up or down stairs supported by two walker-canes, do NOT try to reverse direction. The result is about the same as executing a 180-degree turn on cross-country skis in a willow thicket. You will fall, just further and harder. Simply proceed all the way up or down, then stop in an area offering at least 6’x6′ clear of sleeping dogs, vacuum cleaners trailing loose power cords, and the fragile, spindly legs of antique marble-topped side tables. Then make your turn. (Note to wife: Honey, I swear if the table can’t be fixed, I’ll launch a nationwide search for a duplicate. We needed a new vacuum anyway, and Sancho (our dog) will get over the incident — eventually. He’s just lying low and fleeing on sight of my canes for a while.)
Revolving doors: Avoid them at all costs. Auto-closing standard doors are hard enough to deal with, but whatever speed a revolving door is operating at, it ain’t gonna synchronize with yours. There is something both pitiful and kinda sci-fi horrifying about a large, unshaven man struggling on his back like an overturned tortoise, waving these multi-toed black sticks in the air, kinda looking like a dying mutant cockroach. Meantime, help can’t get to you because you’ve jammed the revolving mechanism and you’re stuck between doors.
Grate-covered drains in walkways are like tank traps for walker-cane users: The “toes” fit down between the grates perfectly, but their fat rubber tips don’t wanta come back out again. Since you need that cane to leave, and you can’t yank it out, you carefully slide down on your belly and try to wiggle ’em out. This presents an image of a big, prone lunatic cursing into an echoing drain with a fat metal periscope-like object cutting circles in the air overhead. Curiously, you’ll find unavoidable patterns of these grates at the entry to MRI labs in regional medical centers, and outside the liquor store you’ll be visiting after you’re freed. I think they do that on purpose.