Believe it or not, today is National White Cane Safety Day. I guess I was suppose to cover all my canes – I own six – in bubble wrap or something. I’m obviously a neglectful CaneMom. Instead I’m honoring them with a top ten list of ways these canes have been useful in arenas other than navigation.

10. A snake catcher. My friend swears my cane looks identical to the one in that movie with snakes on a plane.

9. Retrieving items that have rolled under the stove or refrigerator.

8. hailing a cab in NYC.

7. Checking the depth of a pool’s shallow end.

6. While standing still to watch a musician’s street performance, perching my hat on it’s top.

5. Entertaining cats.

4. As the stem of a flower the year I was an even bigger flower for Halloween.

3. Measuring the empty rooms of my new apartment. My bedroom was something like 2.5 canes in one direction and 3 in the other.

2. Hanging wind chimes. In college, our rooms had these pipes near the ceiling for the sprinkler system. I stood on my dresser, tied the wind chimes around the pipe, then used my cane to push them over to the middle of my room.

1. To get a turtle out of the middle of a road. Rain was coming down in sheets as we drove up Route 116 near Amherst, Massachusetts and we came upon a turtle pretty much volunteering to be road kill. We were worried about touching it – it might have been a snapper – so we used the end of my cane to poke it in the most tender place on its backside. The procedure was continued until the tortoise reached the safety of the road’s shoulder.