The Cane

The Cane

The weekend before I left for my Christmas vacation, I attended an ugly sweater party thrown by my friends Hayley and Emily. In order to prepare for the party, Hayley and I went thrifting and found a turtleneck and vest, which barely made it around my belly. The day of the party, I took a nap shortly before to make sure I was well rested and prepared to mingle into the early morning hours. During my nap, I had a dream. I had a dream that I was a creepy old man with a cane in my sweater vest and turtleneck. Upon that cane, various flavors of candy canes were attached. After I woke up from my nap, I went shopping to make my dream a reality.

I went to Wal-Mart and bought a cane from the pharmacy, some wrapping paper, ribbon, and various flavors of Candy Canes. The cane was a great success. All the people at the party thought it was a great idea (although a little creepy, even though it was intentionally creepy, so not a big deal, right? ..Right??) and the candy canes were distributed to girls and boys alike until they were gone. I won a sash for best accessory. (Full disclosure: It was the only accessory, but I feel confident that it would have won even if there were competition).

As I was preparing to leave for Christmas to see my family in Utah, my friend Hayley (the same who threw the party the weekend before) convinced me to reload the cane and bring it on the airplane to spread Christmas cheer. I thought it was a brilliant idea, so once more I “reloaded” the cane and got it ready to go to the airport with me.

At the airport, I understood that I couldn’t just carry the cane. That would be weird. TSA probably wouldn’t let me just carry a cane through the airport because it could be considered a weapon. I decided that I needed to play the part. I had a limp. I limped into the airport with my roll-on, checked my bag, and then into the line for security. After leaning heavily on my cane for a while, one of the TSA officers approached me and asked if my leg hurt too much to wait in the security line. My mind working quickly: I replied that as a matter of fact, it was really quite painful.

Little did I know how much fun I was about to have. For those of you that know me, you know that I flew for free up to my 26^th birthday. I flew standby and I was always on my best behavior with the airlines. They were always more than happy to take advantage of me because I wasn’t paying and I was at their mercy. For those of you who don’t, I used to fly for free until my 26^th birthday, and I never really had any “rights” with regards to a seat on a plane. Suddenly, I realized that I could not only milk this with the TSA, but with the airline as well. For years, I have been walking myself from gate to gate, as airport employees carted around otherwise capable-looking people, while screaming, “Mind the Cart!”, “Excuse me!”, “Beep! Beep!” or “Coming through!” As well as any other obnoxious and wholly disturbing phrase one might think up to get people out of their way as they careened through the narrow halls of an airport. Now, it was my turn. It was finally my chance to take advantage of a system that had ignored me and treated me as a second-class citizen for so long. I knew the advantages already. All I had to do was give them a reason to give them to me.

When it was time for my flight to Houston to board, I made a scene of pushing through the crowd stumbling over my cane and carry-on. When I finally got to the front, I put an exasperated smile that said, ‘hi, I’m-here-but-I’m-slightly-in-pain’. The ladies had great sympathy for me and asked if I would like to check my roll-on, since it was a full flight, they were more than willing to check it all the way to Salt Lake for me for free. I eagerly agreed; it was ostensibly to get rid of the bag because I kept tripping over it, but for me, it was more for the freedom to move without watching it every moment, since I travel by myself.

With my bag out of the way, the gate agents asked if I would need a wheelchair in Salt Lake. No, I replied, it’s not far to the pick-up; I’ll be able to make it. They next asked if I would like a wheelchair up from the plane in Houston. I hesitated. I wanted to appear as though I thought I was capable of handling it myself. I needed to show that I was independent, despite my handicapped-ness. Finally, I caved; I let them request a wheel chair for me, and, it was finally my turn for the electric cart. At first, I rejected the electric cart, too. I let the gate agents persuade me that my gate really was too far away to walk comfortably. Finally, I gave in. I was glad that they wanted to help me. With all that taken care of, I was ready for my priority boarding: “Now boarding any families with small children or those needing extra time down the jet-way…” That would be me. I was ‘handicapped’. I needed time to walk slowly, gingerly down the jet-way. As I made my way onto the plane, the flight attendants greeted me.

They were quite impressed with my festiveness despite my inability to walk on my own. I explained that since I had to have the cane, I thought I would make the best of a bad situation and try to spread some Christmas cheer. I asked if they would like a candy-cane and they both accepted my offer. The people in the seats next to me were quite kind as well. I have found, since I have my choice of seats, that the aisle seats suit me much better. They can be inconvenient because I have to get up every time someone goes to the bathroom, but that is really a small price to pay for the added legroom.

In Houston, I hobbled off the plane and into the wheelchair waiting for me right outside the door. The carted me up to the terminal where I transferred to an electric cart, where I was finally one of the obnoxious people. I do feel kind of bad, because I was the only one on the cart under the age of 50. Two of the people were so grossly overweight; they took up an entire cart bench each. Then, there were two geriatrics and me sharing the last bench. They were all staring at me, their eyes saying, ‘we can tell why they’re here; they’re old/fat; you… well, you should be healthy enough to do it yourself.’ I looked each one of them in the eye, daring them to verbally call me out on my bluff, but none of them did.

Once at my gate, it was mostly a rinse and repeat with the flight to Salt Lake. I hobbled onto plane when they called out for those needing more time. As I got off the plane in Salt Lake and walked up the jet-way, it was like the scene from The Usual Suspects where Kevin Spacey stands up straight, walks normal, and completely changes his demeanor; it was the same for me. As I was walking up the jet-way, my stride transformed. I picked up my cane, and carried it. I hustled towards the baggage claim. I was excited to meet Jack and some of his friends, who would shortly become my friends, too. As I approached security, I put the cane down and limped through just to complete the illusion (let’s not kid ourselves: The TSA doesn’t really care – they’re glorified security guards, but unfortunately they have enough authority to make life kind of difficult if you disrespect them).

Did I feel like I was cheating the system? Yes. Did I lose any sleep over it? Not at all. Some people would call me shameless for brazenly acknowledging that I was able to take advantage of the system and then writing about it. If you are one of these people, I say you’re jealous because you didn’t think of it first, or you didn’t have the internal wherewithal to do it, because you conform to society’s norms. When was the last time you did something that society would look down on you for, simply because it is ‘against our norms’? Why do you put so much faith in society, anyway?

At this point, I could write a much longer allegory regarding Nietzsche’s theories for Masters and Slaves, or Kant’s self-incurred immaturity, but that would be an essay for a different blog, I suspect. The important thing is to remember the morality prevalent in the thing that is done. In this case, defrauding the TSA and Continental airlines by misrepresenting myself. It would definitely be immoral to take advantage of this loophole every time. And why would I want to? It got to be pretty inconvenient carrying that cane around everywhere. I was almost stuck in the other situation – I was so sure that I had to maintain this persona, my knee actually started to hurt like it had post-arthroscopy several years ago. Will I do it every time I travel? No, and I don’t think you should, either. This is something that should be used sparingly. If everyone takes advantage of the system every time, then no one gets any perks, much less the handicape-ables who actually need it.