The cane mutiny

Recently, I have begun to use a cane when I venture into the public. Mind you, my macho body can still get around just fine without the cane. Granted, I walk a bit like John Wayne with one of his boots missing. But the cane adds a little pizzaz to my sauntering. Plus, it prevents me from bouncing off walls and people as I make my way down the street …resembling a sailboat tacking back and forth …eventually docking at a store entrance or counter.

About those people I bump into. Upon our first foray into a crowd of them … our meaning my cane and me … I rapidly discovered I had entered a different world. My first observation was that people made it a point to give me more space by subtly sidestepping when they saw me approaching them. As they passed by me, they moved farther away from my cane and me. Some speeded up their steps as they made their journey away from a handicapped person. Out of sight, out of mind.

The crème de la crème of being half-crippled: Almost without exception, I no longer wait in line. Anywhere! Name it: grocery stores, movie theaters, restaurants; it’s usually, “After you, sir,” or “Step ahead of me, I’m in no hurry.”

Amazing. My cane has created a mutiny of sorts: a silent sedition against aging.

The only consistent exception to this “Go to the front of the queue” is at the pharmacy. But then, my cane and I are usually in competition with other cane-carrying people and — assuring me of non-preferential treatment — people on crutches or in wheelchairs. But what should I expect to find at a drug store? Someone poised in starting blocks?

Another exception is the Department of Motor Vehicles. I went to the local DMV office to obtain a handicapped sticker for my license plates. If my cane can get a free pass in our queued culture, so can my car. More than that, I could use those handicapped spaces at stores and shopping centers. Rightfully so, they are coveted slots for the less mobile folks in our society.

However, I have seen these elite spaces occupied so often that when I come across an occupied handicap parking space, I check for one of those stickers that I will soon be privileged to put on my car.

I have this headline to report to you: Of the filled handicapped spaces I observed, at least half of them had vehicles without a handicapped sticker on their license plates or a handicapped placard hanging from their rear-view mirror. What cheek! They handicap handicapped people.

In the future, when my cane and I half-stagger toward a store and come across this travesty (of course, only after I am an accredited handicapped person), I am letting the air out of the car’s right tires of those interlopers — that’s my handicapped side. If I am caught, I will yell, “You can’t do anything to me! America exempts us handicapped people from being handicapped, and that car is handicapping my handicap. That’s un-American.”

I could go on about other sagas that my cane and I have encountered since we became handicapped. In fairness, since I became handicapped. My cane is not handicapped, but I like to think of my cane as my handicapped partner.

Due to some urgent matters, recently, my cane and I took our first airline flight together. The airport lines snaked halfway across large terminal rooms. My TSA pass had expired. No matter, the ticket agents, the security guards, the passengers (every last one of them) allowed my cane and me to go to the front of every queue we encountered.

As a cane yielder, I now have more indulgences in this urban life. I could get uppity about this cane business and the privileges it grants me, all courtesy of the kindness of people I encounter.

But in this newly discovered world of human deference and kindness to the handicapped, I vow not to let my cane become my crutch.

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Uyless Black is the author of 41 books. He resides with his wife, Holly, and pup Lilli, in Coeur d’Alene.