Depending on the Kindness of Strangers

Well, I passed my “big test” by successfully completing a VERY full weekend of activities in Rochester, MN. (Note: This is where the Mayo Clinic is so most people who saw me hobbling around on crutches figured I was a Mayo patient!) But did I ever have to adapt my usual M.O., both for performing and teaching as well as just living life and getting around in general.

Here’s the thing: when you’re on crutches, you can’t carry anything with your hands, and certainly nothing that could spill. I’d learned that the previous two weeks at home. But this was the first time I’d traveled and that meant that while I COULD still wear my backpack I could’t manage a suitcase (or even a duffle bag without throwing myself way off balance).

So I had to rely on others to take me to the airport (bringing my bags down to the car from my 3rd-floor apartment), and airport personnel to get me from the curb to my gate (and to the bathroom and snack shop and through security), and the stewards to put my bags and crutches in the overhead compartments (and to get my backpack down once we’d taken off so I had something to rest my bad leg on), and then folks at the layover airports to get me from one terminal to another, and then my host pastor to shuttle me from door to door throughout the weekend and carry my bags up to my hotel room, and make special accommodations for my teaching and performing (all while seated — a bit of a challenge for me, to say the least!) from a stool with an additional chair to rest my leg on, and making sure the pathway through the chancel was wide enough for crutches and that there was a ramp for the stage at the luncheon after worship and people to pass out handouts … and then all those people at the airports on the way home and the friend who picked me up, detoured to a drive-up ATM so I could make a very necessary deposit, and then carried everything up the stairs to my apartment and made sure I had what I needed before leaving. It was all quite a humbling experience for this independent gal! I literally couldn’t have done it by myself.

The wheelchair pushers in the airports were of particular interest to me. I’d never really noticed them before but there are a LOT of them! (And, as a friend morbidly noted, if we as a country continue our obesity trajectory and cases of diabetes keep increasing and more toes have to be amputated, this may be the one secure job for the future!!) They were wonderful … and the recommended tips echoed this! (I’m really glad I checked online before leaving home because I would not have been prepared with near enough fives and ones — I spent $50 in tips on this trip! But it was worth it.)

As someone who makes a living depending on others to pay me a somewhat subjective amount for services rendered, I was happy to return the favor (especially for the poor lads who got stuck gettng all my stuff — laptop, shoe, crutches, bags, liquids, etc. — through security!).