Image Awareness, Scamming, and Package Burdens

Dear Ms. Meniscus,

I'm a 27 year-old with bad knees. I have had a combined 5 surgeries between the two of them, beginning at the age of 17. I work in San Francisco as a graphic designer and I often have trouble navigating the streets of the City by the Bay. Occasionally - more and more often - I need the use of a cane to help take the pressure off both knees at the same time. The problem is that where I work, how you look, dress, act, etc. is very important. Obviously I'm protected by law and am not worried about any major repercussions of someone spotting my handy walking assistant, but I find myself worrying what others will think and how they will react. I try to conceal my condition as much as possible and I wonder - WWMMD?

-Citizen Cane

Dear Cane,

If WWMMD refers to "What Would Ms. Meniscus Do," I wish you as much health as you have wit. You see my friend, the only time anyone refers to me as "Jesus", the address is promptly followed by two to four expletives in conjunction with a miscreant gesture. But I digress. It seems as though your situation presents two problems: one that concerns your health and one that concerns your psychological composition. Your mere use of a cane does not connote weakness or incompetence in any way. You are a graphic designer; would the world be aesthetically appealing or stimulating if it were monochrome? In other words, there is strength in the diversity of humanity. Everyone leans on crutches of one sort or another; some are visible and some are not. There is also strength in helping one's self, and if a cane improves your mobility and therein, quality of life, wield it as Fred Astaire did, with pride, style, and flair.

Dear Ms. Meniscus,

I am a single 30-something mother of a 3 year-old daughter with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. I don't have arthritis, though her late grandmother did. I am never sure when she is in real pain or when she is just being spoiled and has figured out how to "work" me. How can you tell the difference between agony and a 3 year-old scam artist?

-Often Helpless

Dear Often,

Your moral quandary straddles the benevolent and nefarious aspects of human nature. To believe or not to believe--that is the question. Unfortunately, Ms. Meniscus cannot offer explicit advice in this arena, but must remain in the abstract. All forms of pain (physical, emotional, et al) are relative. Arthritic pain in particular cannot be quantified or measured. Ms. Meniscus therefore intuits that the peerless approach to your predicament is to verbalize your concerns to your thriving three year-old, in the hopes of elucidating what is honest vs. what is mendacious. Perhaps she can view Peter and the Wolf to better comprehend the moral implications of disingenuousness.

Dear Ms. Meniscus,

Is there any way you suggest I could get my postal delivery person to be a little bit kinder and a little bit more helpful? I know I'm at the end of a long route (that he walks), and I usually receive packages (from catalogs, etc.) that he hates to deliver. However, he usually leaves the packages (both light and heavy ones) where they are difficult to retrieve (i.e. on the ground, a long distance from my door) for someone burdened by a bad back and arthritic fingers.

-Looking for a parcel of advice

Dear Parcel,

Churchill once stated that "Magnanimity is a virtue." Though interactions with il postino can be recondite to resolve, Ms. Meniscus has faith that a state of blissful connubiality can be attained if diplomacy is kept in mind. Next time your mail is expected, offer your communication-laden guest some assorted delectable canapes, along with an amiable supplication for strategic placement of your multitudinous packages. Your perfectly reasonable entreaty will no doubt be aided by your civility. The Carpenters' "Hey! Mr. Postman" can lend a fitting soundtrack to this endeavor.

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