Watching the Age of Innovation on a Seated Walker

Every month or so now there’s a five-column Boston Globe headline about some new innovative company landing in the Seaport or some other trendy hot spot in the region.

It’s exciting names like Amazon, or Reebok or Bose – all the people who fled the city for the suburbs like Canton or Natick in years past, while the rest of us stuck around.

Now the view is gold-plated again in Boston.

But none of us are gold-plated, and I often see a whole lot of other things that I’m not sure fit in the land of world headquarters.

My favorite thing to ponder nowadays has been those medical device walkers that also have a portable seat – a seated walker. Most people wheel along with them, then stop at the bus stop or for a pit stop, and sit right down.

Relaxation with a seated walker can happen anywhere.

Plus hand brakes, too.

A really popular move in these social circles is to crank down the seated  walker, and stop for a smoke.

Two weeks ago, I watched a woman, who was too young to have a seated walker, rolling one down the street while also dragging an oxygen tank and balancing a cigarette on the fingers.

You’re not going to see that in Canton.

It’s a Boston scene, and particularly because the majority of the population using a seated walker is far too young to need one. More and more, I see people that aren’t disabled and aren’t old, but they’re using these medical devices.

The seated walker is the worst offender.

And now that Boston eccentricity will be mixing with the three-piece suits of success, and the casual cool of innovation. Where do 50-year-olds hunkered down on a seated walker fit with those folks?

I guess they don’t.

So where will people with seated walkers go?

I suppose that’s the rub…anywhere they want, ‘cuz they can sit down and rest all the way there.

 

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I guess it’s time to kiss the good weather we’ve had good-bye for a time.

In the space of the last few, pleasant weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about golf, and I’ve concluded Boston isn’t a golfer’s town.

First of all, the climate stinks. You gotta have grass for golf. We have none from October to April.

But more than that, I think there’s a clinical aversion to the game here.

Sure, we have golf courses, and people do play a lot of golf here, but it’s not like in other places around the country.

I don’t think Bostonians should play golf.

It’s not healthy for them, or us.

My point is I don’t think it wise to arm a population that suffers from severe anxiety and untethered anger management issues with a set of 13 metal rods – all outfitted with a heavy piece of solid metal on the ends.

Sounds more like a wise-guy whack job than a game.

So, let’s all play modified fast-pitch softball instead!

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