Personal story: a funny thing happened today on the way to lunch

I don’t often share personal stories on here, because my approach to politics isn’t personal. But writing is personal. After I recently shared my story with all of you about how a foot injury kept me mostly homebound and semi-immobile while I was covering Donald Trump’s criminal trial, many of you showed interest. So it’s occurred to me that perhaps I should share a bit more of myself as a human being on here. So I’m going to try writing articles like this from time to time. If it’s not for you, I’ll urge you to simply skip the occasional personal articles, rather than sending me complaints about it.

Okay, so I trust that anyone who’s still reading is doing so because they’re interested in a story that has very little if anything to do with the politics of the day. Instead this story is about lunch.

When I started working from home, one of the first things I figured out was that I needed to go out for lunch every day. You have to get out of the house, taste fresh air, and get some exercise every day or else sitting in a home office all day will catch up with you, physically and psychologically. But with the foot injury confining me to a medical scooter for the past month, it just wasn’t practical to do that – until yesterday.

On Monday I found myself finally far enough along in my recovery that I was able to try trading in the medical scooter for a cane. After a day of using the cane around the house, no worse for wear, on Tuesday I decided to venture outside with the cane in search of something I hadn’t done in a long time: lunch.

It’s a seven minute walk to the nearest lunch counter spot, and by golly, I pulled it off yesterday. At this point in my recovery, my foot doesn’t actually hurt anymore. I’m just not allowed to put my full weight down on it. So walking to lunch with a cane isn’t a struggle in terms of my foot injury. It’s only a struggle in terms of figuring out how to walk with the cane.

As some of you no doubt already know based on your own personal experiences, it turns out nearly every actor on TV uses a cane wrong. I’ve quickly learned that you don’t use it to prop up your injured side. You use it on your good side, to take the weight off your bad side. In that sense you almost become a tripod as you walk. I’ve had relatives who walk with canes, and it’s a very different experience than what I always imagined it to be. But it was nonetheless easy to get the hang of, if only because unlike my grandmother – who was trying to get around with an elderly broken body – I’m just using it to keep my weight off a still-healing foot.

Lunch was more than a bit enjoyable, given that it was the first time I’d gone out for lunch in a month. Sure, you can get the same food delivered to your home these days. But there’s something about being out and about, among the living, with random passersby… it’s just different.

Everything went smoothly until I went to get up from my table and promptly knocked my cane onto the ground. No big deal. But someone at the next table flew over and fetched my cane and put it back in my hand before I could even let him know that I was easily capable of retrieving it myself. So I just accepted the help and smiled and said “Thank you.”

Still, there’s a self consciousness to all of it. I can pick up my cane off the ground, why should this other guy have to do it for me? And why am I walking around with a cane? I’m only forty-seven years old, I’m not permanently disabled, I’m not even in real pain anymore. So what business do I have using this thing? I feel like an imposter walking down the sidewalk. I worry that people are judging me. And then it occurs to me that this is what people with disability and mobility issues are facing all the time.

Age is a funny thing anyway. I’m forty-seven. If I were running for President, they’d tell me I was too young. On the other hand, if I were a professional athlete for instance, my career would be long over by now. Like all things, age is relative. You’re not “old” unless you’re giving up. And dagnabbit, I went out to lunch today. I might even do it again tomorrow.

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