Snakes on a Cane - The Highly Anticipated Sequel

For the past six months, I have been in the market for a new cane. Before my most recent surgery, I didn't want to get a new one, even though mine makes an ungodly clinking noise when I walk and the handle is falling apart faster than my plans for a more robust dating life. I figured that if my gluteus medius got fixed, I eventually would be able to walk unaided and I should save my money for dealing with Vancouver beer prices ($4.50 for a warm PBR! Seriously, people!). But since the reattachment didn't work and I'm still legitimately half-assed, it looks like the cane will be my permanent +1. It's time to upgrade to a better model. Or at least a model that doesn't leave little gummy bits of handle rubber on my palms that resemble snot. (I know. So sexy).

I've been down the cane-buying road before: the cat-themed canes; the sword canes (I can barely manage to not kill people with my regular cane. Lord help us all if I ever get one with a lethal weapon inside); the canes with a silver skull on the handle (unless it shoots lasers from the eyes, not interested); the ones made of lucite or topped with a wolf/eagle/dragon/mudflap girl/dolphin. Seriously, I like dolphins and all, but who likes dolphins enough to put up with brass dorsal fin sticking into your palm every time you try to walk? And also, someone needs to put a disclaimer on those canes that have the mudflap girl on them that if you use one, that's going to be the only naked girl riding on your shaft for the rest of your life. (Too far? Too far.)

No, I attract enough attention walking down the street as it is. What I need is a cane that blends into the background, like some kind of a secret service agent. A cane that says, "I have a permanent disability, so stop asking me if I've sprained my ankle because if I hear the phrase 'Gosh, what did you do to yourself?' one more time I am going to shank someone" while also saying "Oh, and by the way, I'm not 90 years old and can still bring the hotness." A cane that does its job as a mobility aid but doesn't look like a lifestyle choice.

You'd think this would be easy: go online, find a cane that's tall enough and unobtrusive, purchase it and have it arrive to my door thanks to the power of the internets. No. Incorrect. For one, the website design of most online cane stores looks fresh from a Geocities fan page circa 1996 and it's nearly impossible to navigate any of them. Plus, just out of principle, I'm not buying anything from a store that has a GIF of a snowman dancing along the screen or that claims to be marketing its products to the "enfeebled."

The second problem, however, is that I've discovered that most canes have names more suited to sex toys and I cannot take them seriously. Here are some examples:

• The Black Mamba
• The Tuxedo Night Stick
• The Blackthorn Premium Knob
• Mylord With Grapes
• The Magician's Wand
• The Regency Scrimshaw Bulb
• The Lady Blowing Horn
• The Alpaca Horn of Plenty
• The Burgandy StripTease (not even kidding)
• The Powder Pink Soft Touch

I'm sorry, but do I want some delivery person coming to my house and asking my mom if she'll sign for a Power Pink Soft Touch with adjustable shaft? No. No I do not. It's not happening. Alas, I have a feeling that the Great Cane Hunt of 2010 is going to last longer than SurgeonWatch 2009. The excitement around here really never ceases.

At Least My Left Arm Still Works

Recently, I have been on a mission to find a new cane. Well, I am happy to report that the search is over. I no longer need a new cane....what I need now is a new wrist. Yes, today I took my gimpiness to new and unparalleled heights by fracturing/spraining my wrist. The same wrist I use to hold my cane. The same cane that prevents me from walking like the Phantom of the Opera. Translation: in the past 24 hours, my gimpiness has increased by roughly 200%. You know, because I really needed some special sauce on my disability sandwich.

The end result is that instead of being a six-foot-two chick walking in a slightly gimpy manner with a broken cane, I am now a six-foot-two chick walking in a highly gimpy, zombie-heroin-addict manner, minus the cane, with a broke-down wrist covered in a huge splint. (Unexpected bonus: because of typing difficulties, I might finally learn the noble art of concision). Someone really needs to give me my own category in the Darwin Awards...or at least a show on TLC. ("The Girl Whose Body Fell Off.")

And how did this happen? You can blame wheelchair basketball. Actually, you can blame me for returning to wheelchair basketball even though I was the proud owner of both a damaged hip made of ceramic and a partially detached ass muscle. You can further blame me for making a decision as I was being launched a few feet up in the air and was hurtling towards the ground to save the hip by sacrificing the wrist. I mean, I have been around the wheelchair-basketball block. I know that the first rule of falling is not to put your wrist out. I should also have realized that my hip is basically being replaced this summer and is therefore the prosthetic equivalent of a rental car. That shit is getting returned to the dealership around June. My wrist, however, is something I'm kind of stuck with. Bad read.

I have therefore abandoned my search for the perfect cane in search for the perfect way to not walk like you're about to eat someone's brainz. My immediate thought (because "House" is like crack to me) is that I could switch my cane to the opposite hand and walk like Dr. House. (House walks with his cane beside his injured leg, which is the opposite of what they teach you in cane-walking school). After some experimentation, however, it became clear that you must need to be a complex, twisted medical genius to rock that look. I don't have the coordination and wound up looking like someone's grandma who won't use a proper medical device because those are for "old people" and so drags herself around her apartment by using a broom handle as a "hiking stick."

The only solution is for me to go au naturale in the cane department. True, this will probably result in me frightening small children, but I've got places to go and things to do. Like hen-peck typing with my one good hand. Or explaining to the nice police officer that I'm not drunk, it's just that I had a hip replacement and my ass fell off and...

Hey, did I just get through an entire post without quoting Dan Bejar?

Quoth the Cane..Nevermore!

For the past few months, I've been in the market for a new cane. (Exciting times, I know. Just living the dream). The problem is that my current cane is broken and makes a tapping noise, the source of which I have not been able to locate, so I feel like I'm walking around in an Edgar Allen Poe short story, since I'm followed by a perpetual tapping, tapping on my chamber floor. (Quoth the cane, nevermore).

You'd think this would be easy. Go to a medical supply store, pick out a cane that does not scream "I carry wads of graying ten-year-old Kleenex and peppermints in the pockets of my cardigan," adjust that cane to my height: problem solved. Off to the races. All systems go. Ever onward to victory.

No. Wrong. Problem not solved. All systems not go. Victory not...onward...to....(?) Because, when I went to the medical supply store in Champaign, here are the cane choices I have to choose from:

• A cane patterned with American flags and eagles.
• A cane patterned with red hats.
  
• A zebra-striped cane.
• A Las Vegas cane, because what happens in Vegas doesn't have to stay in Vegas. You can carry the bright lights of the Vegas strip around on your mobility aid. All the glitz, none of the having to pee in a Big Gulp cup because you can't drag yourself away from the slot machine.
• a polka-dotted cane.
• a cane with a kind of swirly, paisley design that managed to look both geriatric and acid-trippy all at once.
  
• a cat cane. Because what I really need is to look a little more like a crazy cat lady.
  

Now, see....I like cats. And I like Las Vegas (or I did like it that one time I went there for a tournament and we got to take a free limo to all the games and basically rolled up in that joint like the pimps we are). And I even like red hats, though that whole red hat poem gives me horrible flashbacks of Grade 10 English and a kid who was so competitive with me that the teacher had to hide my assignments and give them to me after class because he would occasionally tear them up if I beat him. (True story). But do I want to carry any of them around on my cane? No.

The reason: I am six feet tall. I have the out-of-control hair of a young Bob Dylan or Dan Bejar (it's about the only similarity I have with Dan Bejar, alas). I walk like I inject heroin into my feet. I have a tendency to talk with my hands using elaborate gestures that routinely cause me to spill drinks and hit people in the face. The last thing I need is to draw more attention to myself.

I therefore require a cane that is both badass and inconspicuous: the kind of cane you could thrust proudly in the air at a Destroyer concert but also lay demurely under your chair at a meeting or, say, a garden party (I've never been to a garden party, but I once had this Garden Party Barbie, so I've always wanted to). I suspect that such a cane does not exist. I suspect that I will be walking around with my noisy cane forever....or at least until the surgery (fingers crossed).

Does anyone have any suggestions? Because right now that "snakes on a cane" option is looking pretty damn good.