Why You Must ALWAYS Carry a Spare White Cane

But if you forget, try divine intervention

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I started using a white cane to get around 20 or so years ago, but I didn’t always carry a back-up. Canes can break or bend beyond salvation in the middle of a journey, leaving you in a lot of trouble. But I have some, if you will, good news. If your cane breaks, and you don’t have another, there is always one last hope: an encounter with Jesus. Yes, today I will be testifying to the mercy Jesus showed me in a moment of need. Come and see.

I got my first cane during my freshmen year of college. My vision, already quite low, had finally deteriorated to the point where I needed one. Or really, to the point where I was forced to admit I needed one because it was only a matter of time before I bumped into the wrong guy and got punched. A sighted instructor from a local nonprofit came to campus and trained me on how to use a cane, giving me one that was rather heavy and about four feet long. It was made of a material that did not easily break, but over time it bent, usually at the bottom. I reordered whenever the current one started to resemble a hockey stick.

I later learned that the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) recommends canes be much longer. They should reach your nose if you stand them up straight. I’m 6’2”, so my nose is considerably higher than four feet off the ground. The NFB’s advice is usually worth heeding because, sadly, it’s one of the few blindness organizations in the world actually run by blind people. For reasons I can’t honestly explain, I didn’t just switch to the advised length. Instead, I’ve purchased a series of incrementally longer canes, inching toward the NFB’s recommendation. I’ve found, unsurprisingly, that I feel more safe and confident walking around as the cane extends.

Quick note. If you’re chuckling to yourself as I go on about how confident I’ve become as my “cane” has gotten longer, you should know you are the first sighted person to ever think of this joke. I have discussed canes with friends for many years, and not a single one has had this stroke of brilliance. It’s not tiresome. You are a one-of-a-kind comedic genius. Drop everything and move to Los Angeles. Hollywood is surely your destiny.

Anyway, as my cane lengthened, it also became heavier, making it more difficult to hold—stop laughing.

I needed a lighter-weight material. I landed on Graphite, for its combination of sturdiness and mobility. The issue is graphite canes don’t bend. They break.

Walking to the subway from work one day in downtown Manhattan, I went to cross a street. The walk light was on, and I had the right-of-way. How does a blind person know that? The short answer is we listen for the traffic going in the same direction as us to start moving to know we have the light, and white cane laws give us the right-of-way (the long answer is probably a future post that involves a childhood trip to the hospital). But concerns as trivial as pedestrians or traffic laws have never stopped New York City cabs from doing whatever they want. One of them turned right and passed about three feet in front of me as I stepped into the road. It’s back wheel ran over my cane, the bottom third of which snapped and was left dangling by the internal elastic band that holds the sections of the cane together. I stood there for a second, processing what had happened. In disbelief, I half-heartedly wiggled the cane a bit to assess the damage. It flopped around uselessly in my hand—I swear I will end this story if you don’t wipe that smirk off your face!

I had to move. It was a narrow road, so I cautiously walked a few steps until I felt the curb cut of the sidewalk under my feet. I held the broken cane out to my right. There was, as I suspected, a trash can. I glumly deposited the cane, and called my wife. It was my enormous good luck that a work event had brought her close to my office, and this corner was the exact place we had planned to meet and commute home together. She picked up and I informed her she would be holding my hand all the way home. Not technically for romantic reasons, but we could say it was that too.

After this, I started buying ultra-light-weight canes to have as an emergency substitute in my bag at all times. I was consistent for a while. But along came Covid-19, and I didn’t leave my home for what I think we can all agree was 15 years. I stopped thinking much about what I need to get around outside. When my last graphite cane broke, I started using one of the flimsier back-ups and never bought a replacement. “Little did he know,” says the narrator, forebodingly.

One day in early autumn, I was travelling home and had to transfer from the subway to a bus. But the bus was delayed. It wasn’t coming for half an hour. The walk home was about 25 minutes, and it was nice out. So, “Forget the bus,” I said.

I walked a couple blocks. Then, in the middle of another crosswalk, a man who wasn’t watching where he was going bumped my shoulder. He got his feet on either side of my back-up cane. As he stepped forward and I went to sweep my cane the other direction, he almost tripped. I say “almost” because, before he could do the preferable thing and fall on his face, my cane snapped. I heard him do a little footwork to stay on his feet, and keep walking. No words, no acknowledgment. Just went on his merry way. So I once again found myself standing alone in the middle of the street with a useless cane. Only this time I knew it was partially my fault. One guy’s legs would not have broken a graphite cane.

I typically find at this point in the story that people become indignant. “How could he do that and just walk away? What’s wrong with him” they ask. These are, I suppose, fair questions. But they don’t naturally occur to me. The important context is I regularly see how disability can make non-disabled people’s decency and common sense evaporate into mist on the wind. Any given interaction I have with a sighted person has a realistic chance of involving behavior bafflingly outside what we would otherwise consider socially normal.

I have a theory about the psychology of non-disabled people to explain this behavior, developed during decades of living among and studying them. To put it scientifically, and stop me if this is too much jargon, disabilities are scary and weird. People feel icky thinking about them. So they try really hard not to think about them. Unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a disabled person is, therefore, tremendously jarring. My studies have revealed that the brain’s bio-chemical response to remembering that disabilities exist is to panic, delete everything it has ever learned about human interactions, and engage in a randomly-generated behavior. Like ceasing all talking and staring transfixed. Speaking as if to a toddler. Screaming. Running away. Laughing. Saying far too loudly “I’ll give you a wide berth!” Blurting out to my wife that blind men make great lovers. Or just pointing and shouting, “He’s blind!” (all have happened to me).

And those are the people who come across me under regular circumstances. A guy who doesn’t notice me until he’s hit my shoulder and broken my cane? His brain probably fully blacked out to protect him from, I don’t know, ripping off his clothes and sprinting into the Hudson River singing “I’m a Little Tea Pot.” He wasn’t remarkable.

I was mad, though, because it was a nice day and I was looking forward to the walk. I didn’t want to pay for a Lyft (I am as frugal as my Dutch last name suggests), and I wasn’t turning back to wait an eternity for the bus.

I knew the area well because I was near an old apartment of mine. One avenue over was a street with very wide sidewalks and few people. I decided to go that way, taking it slow and getting whatever use I could out of the broken cane. This worked for a while. I did scrape my shin on something sharp. But I lifted the leg of my jeans and touched the spot. No blood. Carry on.

I know lots of people passed by me while I was doing this. I don’t know whether they comprehended what they were seeing. But after several minutes, a guy walked up to me. I was in the middle of a block. I could hear he came from the direction of the street, passing through cars parked next to the curb. Like he was just strolling casually through traffic and decided on a whim to give the sidewalk a shot.

“Hey, is something wrong with your cane?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s not supposed to be broken in half,” I said.

Moving right by the sarcasm, he told me he was an EMT passing in an ambulance. He and his partner had seen me and stopped so he could jump out and help, which explained his path of approach. He had a roll of medical tape and asked if he could try mending the break.

“Sure!” I said, and 30 seconds later, he handed it back to me. I waved the cane back and forth. It wasn’t a great fix, but it was something. I thanked him, and he returned to his ambulance. Then, a little ways down the block, there he was again.

Sounding slightly ashamed, he said, “Hey, I’m back. My partner told me I did a crappy job, so I brought this.” He handed me a roughly foot-long strip of firm padding.

“Are you going to splint my cane?”

“That’s the plan.”

A minute later, I had a mostly-intact, MacGyvered cane. It would definitely get me home.

“Wow, thanks so much! What’s your name?” I asked and held out my hand to shake. He took it.

“J,” he said, “for Jesus.” Mind you, not Jesús. Jesus.

This is not an entirely un-heard-of name among, in particular, Dominican New Yorkers. Nevertheless, let us praise the good work of Jesus. For where there is brokenness, he will make things whole.

Yes, brothers and sisters, when I found myself in troubled times, when the path forward was dark and uncertain, when I needed a savior, when my cane was not working, dangling limply in front of me—okay, I warned you! This story is over.