So, let me be straight with you right out of the gate. Cartoon Me, up there, is so much more excited than Real Me is when it comes to our latest accessory. Truth be told, all versions of me are torn by my newest addition, the mobility aid now officially known as Nitro, the rollator.

On the upside? Nitro is reliable. I am instantly more confident when I am walking behind her. She is fairly slick looking (as rollators go) and she isn’t too terribly awkward to push around. She collapses easily. She lets me sit when I can’t move one more step. No, really, I can literally put Nitro in park and sit my ass down anywhere I happen to be! What could be better than that?

Well, she could fit in my goddamn trunk, but that is apparently much too much to ask.

Beyond the fact that I’ve probably put this step off for far too long, the fact that I now have a device that I walk around with kind of like my very own personal shopping cart changes things a lot. I am getting better at getting her into and out of the back seat of my terribly impractical car every time I do it. But I still have to do it, so the mere fact that I am arranging myself, my bags and my rollator when I go to get out of my car causes kind of a spectacle.

People want to help. But I’m good. I got this. Mostly. Because I’m finding that I actually do need people to help sometimes, like with the random door that doesn’t have a handy-push-button opener. I need help navigating in small spaces not quite wide enough for my personal not-shopping-cart. I take up more space than the average bird in the elevator all of the sudden, as I learned today when I took Nitro to her first appointment with my Precious, Cheryl, my therapist.

The guys in the parking lot at Cheryl’s office have to park my car for me, them’s the rules there, so they all know me. They’ve been mostly the same guys, give or take one or two, since I’ve been seeing Cheryl. That would be over 14 years of parking. More recently, they’ve seen me progress from walking funny without any help looking like a drunk in the middle of the damn afternoon, to sporting a cane from time to time and from there to the trekking poles for serious hikers and old ladies with wonky legs.

The recent heat, though, has prevented me from seeing my old friends the parking lot guys for a few weeks. I’ve done my last three weekly sessions with Cheryl by phone. Remember. This is the summer of energy conservation whereby I am devoting all available energy stores to getting myself to PT and doing my best at getting stronger. I hate doing Cheryl appointments by phone. I will do anything and everything to avoid doing it but when it’s 95 degrees and the dew point is in the 70’s, I am not leaving my house regardless of the tattered state of my psyche. It becomes necessary to do some sessions by phone.

Cheryl is as easily distracted as I am, but particularly while on the telephone. Our telephone sessions go something like this:

Me: I’ve been bursting into tears so much lately I’m afraid sometimes I might drown.

Cheryl: (silence)

Me: I mean, you know I have legitimate things to cry about so I guess it’s not that surprising but I really don’t enjoy this at all. I’d really like it to stop.

Cheryl: (hmmmmmmm…random kitchen banging noises, salt shaker shaking, chair plopping noise) Ok. That makes sense.

Me: But I probably shouldn’t be holding all of that mess in. I mean, I could just combust someday from the overwhelming pressure of pure internal angst. I should probably let it out more often, that would really, probably be the best thing. I should just cry and cry and cry everywhere. Anywhere. In business meetings even. I’m just going to cry all over the place. Every damn where.

Cheryl: (silence)

Me: Are you even listening to me?

Cheryl: I’m wearing my hearing aids today. But I turned them off because they get too loud on the phone so I’m hearing about every third word. But I’m following. We need to get you out of your amygdala and back into the mid-brain.

Me: (hmmmmm) Yeh. Right. You’re putting salt on your damn apple and you go back to that amygdala line every time you stop listening.

Cheryl likes to eat her apple, during our session, with salt and a few hunks of cheese. I’ve been watching her do this for more than 14 years,too.

Cheryl: Right! So will I be seeing you next week? We really have to get you out of your amygdala. It’s really important.

Me: (Sigh…we have 15 minutes left)

Today, I rallied. I put on a stupid little sun dress thingy. I put on a little bit of makeup (that I am now annoyed by since I will need to take it off again before I go to bed). I finished up my 75 conference calls of the day and got myself into my car and then to Cheryl’s office in real live person. I wanted to introduce her to Nitro but I also just really needed to talk. Like, focused talk not distracted-while-salting-her-apple talk.

When I pulled into the lot, the usual guy came to my car to give me the ticket and park it for me. “I need a second to collect my gear,” I said as I began donning Karl, my backpack, and moving my passenger seat forward so as to get at Nitro who was nestled in the back seat. Got her out. Popped her open. Off I went. I could feel every single one of them watching me while I walked away. I thought I was being paranoid but I glanced over my shoulder (I can do that kind of thing now without falling over because Nitro holds me up) and all five parking lot attendants were indeed standing there watching me roll/walk away. OK, then.

Cheryl, as usual, is the remedy for what ails me. ALL of the things that ail me and there are so very many. There’s my tendency to over-think every aspect of how horribly wrong every little thing could go once I am in the outside world alone with Nitro, more often.

“I’m obsessing over the valet at work. So, where I have to pull up, I will have to get Nitro and the rest of my gear out of the passenger side of the car, on the street side. So I will, maybe, for a minute or five, I might have to have my car door wide open while I’m getting Nitro out and popped open and securing Karl and doing all of this while not falling over, with my door propped wide open and it might be in the way of traffic trying to get around me and people will be annoyed with  me. People in traffic downtown trying to get around me. People behind me trying to valet park after I finally get my massive amount of shit out of my stupid fancy car are going to be annoyed too because they have to wait for me…” I ramble on and on and one about every detail of all the many people I am going to annoy.

“Then someone will have to eventually stop to let me cross in the middle of the street so I don’t have to walk to the cross walk and then what if Nitro is too wide to fit in between parked cars? I mean, she’s not super wide but she’s wide enough and I’ll probably stop traffic again trying to figure out where I can fit through parked cars and I’ll be in the way AGAIN and people will be annoyed AGAIN. What if that happens like every time?”

Cheryl looks at me with a tiny smirk playing at her left top lip,”That thing collapses right? That’s see if you can wheel it while it’s skinny, like that. I mean, to get in between parked cars, for example.”

I collapse Nitro. I push her around in front of me pretending to navigate between parked cars that are actually Cheryl’s outdoor wicker furniture that she uses in her very indoor lobby. Nitro works just fine in skinny mode. Problem mostly solved.

“You are worried about being a bother. You’re worried about taking up space. If people get annoyed because you need a little more time and patience, fuck those people. You don’t want to know them anyway,” Cheryl says. And she’s right.

I ramble along a bit more about every potential ridiculous and bothersome situation that Nitro and I may find ourselves in. Cheryl gives me the smirk. We move on. It was a very, very good session. I needed it so badly. Cheryl is 71 years young and she can never retire. We agreed that she had to keep working until my life stops falling apart every ten years or so. It seemed reasonable at the time.

We go fifteen minutes over our time. She owed me that anyway. I walk/wheel myself out of the office and Cheryl walks with me to the rest room on my way out. “I think you look amazing with that thing,” she says to me. “You look so much more relaxed. At ease. You’re posture is terrific. I think I really like this change you’ve made. You are going to like it too. In a little time. I think you really will.” And I know she’s right.

I get myself back to the cashier shack in the underground garage and there’s been a shift change so my favorite cashier guy is in the booth. He smiles as I approach and as I hand him my ticket he says, “Hey Miss Fancy! I haven’t seen you ’round here in a minute. You doing ok? It’s so good to see you.”

“Aw, thanks,” I stammer. “I was having some trouble getting around but now I have this new contraption to help me out so you’ll probably see me next week just like always.”

“Well, that will make me real happy. Can I help you with that?” He says.

“Nah, you don’t have to do that, I got it. I have to practice.”

But before I finish the sentence he’s out of the booth helping me navigate Nitro back into her cozy spot in the back seat. One of my other parking lot attendant guys gets my door on the driver’s side and helps me into the car. I’m holding up traffic behind me, people trying to leave work are lined up a few deep. And now I’m also holding up cars coming into the garage while two more parking lot guys come over to fuss over getting me and all of my gear into my ridiculously impractical vehicle.

“Guys, stop, I feel so bad! Look at all of these people waiting!”

“Let ’em wait, Miss Fancy. Let ’em wait. We want to help you so they can freaking wait. See you next week! Make sure you come back next week. Let them wait.”

I smiled the whole way home. Sang some songs. Cursed the wheels I can see in my rear-view mirror every time I glance in it, but then I wind up laughing. Singing and laughing and crying a little bit, all at the same time. Because I used to be fancy, but now I’m not, and those guys have no idea how much their gestures of kindness meant to me today. It’s been a rough couple of days, folks. I needed that kindness. I really did.

On Thursday, I will attempt to get myself into the office, along with Nitro. I’m sure my premonition of valet hijinks will play out in real live person Thursday morning on the streets of downtown Pittsburgh when I attempt to get myself across the street and into my office building. The office building with the accessible entry door with the broken push button thingy and the cars that park way too close together. I guess it will be OK. It kind of has to be, right?

Everything would be so much more fine if the damn thing fit in the trunk. No traffic to block! No strangers to annoy! Also, I’m thinking of dying my hair a new and different color. I wonder what color would look best with Nitro? Do older women with rollie-walker-things even have cool hair? You bet your ass, they do.