The Quick Crip

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• June 17, 2025

While exploring ruins in Italy on with my cane with my broken foot, I got nods from a number of people who were impressed about how I got well I was getting around despite my injury. There were plenty of not crippled people exhausted and complaining about walking. And then I’d shuffle by them, quietly making them feel shamed in their perfectly healthy bodies.

“That’s impressive,” a woman said, pointing to me.

“They call me ‘the quick crip!’”

Literally no one calls me that, and hopefully never will.

There’s no sugar coating it—I hate this glimpse behind the curtain of being elderly. Though I can feel the slow recovery, the day to day of not being able to walk, run, or looking at the brand new surfboard in the corner of my room, grinds my mental health. It’s a known fact that exercise is tremendously helpful for those with mental illness. Restless as I am, I deplore the idleness, and even writing is difficult without the ability to pace or take breaks moving around outside. My logic brain struggles to stave off toxic thoughts. From the outright insane worry that I’m getting fat (I’m not, though many of my pants are snug around my hips as my stomach isn’t as flat as I’m used to without the regular cardio) to the less insane fear that my stalled career is a sign that my best years as a comedian are already behind me. “You’re a loser, Lori,” a giant troll tells me in my head as I ice my foot for the second or third time that day. “And soon you will be a fat loser!”

You try to focus on the ways you’re lucky. Like that the break in my foot is clean, and no tendons are damaged. Or that I’m seeing the best foot doctor in New York, which makes him the best foot doctor in the country, which makes him the best in the whole world. Professional athletes seek out his care, so there’s no need to be distrustful when he tells me my foot will heal just fine given the proper rest and care and I’ll be back to all my normal activities in what will ultimately feel like a blip in my life, even my year. Patience, however, is not one of my virtues. Hell, I’m not sure I have any virtues.

I really don’t even know how people cope with permanent injuries that affect their mobility. I guess, at a certain age, you slow down naturally and maybe become just grateful the grim reaper hasn’t come down on you with a sickle. And while I don’t think or want handicapped people to feel that their life is worth less, I’d sooner be dead than be confined to a wheel chair.

“Did you learn your lesson?” My dad asked me, “that you shouldn’t be hiking alone?”

No. I haven’t. If I’m being honest. Once healed, I will continue to adventure alone because if I spent my life waiting for others I would hardly do anything at all. For me, a stagnant life waiting on someone who may never come is worse than the risks, even as I’m living in the wake of a fall.

“What if you fell and hit your head and went unconscious?” Dad presses, a concern any parent would have fearing the safety of their child. But I don’t even really feel alone when I’m hiking alone. First of all, I usually have cell service. Even in Italy where I broke my foot, or way up on the mountains in Hawaii, I had cell service most of the time. So I still feel I have a lifeline connected to the world. Additionally, I feel more alone in a group of people than I do in nature. Furthermore, women are more likely to be killed by their boyfriends on hikes than killed on their own!!!

If I ever fell off a cliff to my death, it would almost feel appropriate. And I’d rather I straight up die than survived to be paralyzed. While that’s not a comfortable realization for most, I don’t know that I ever really planned to grow old and while we’re being especially upfront, I think that is also one of the reasons I wasn’t ever sure I wanted children. Once you have kids, you have to stick around a long time. And even though I am especially close with my nephews and niece, and they are three huge reasons I want to be around even when suicidal thoughts creep in, there is something far too comforting to me about my own death, knowing it is the end of turmoil and loneliness (“I find it kind of funny. I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had…”).

Temporarily walking with a cane certainly isn’t the worst thing in the world. Someone told me I looked wise with a cane. Like Yoda. Though once you’re two years old, you don’t really think there will ever be a time in your life you’ll need to learn to walk again. Deploring every glance of sympathy, I must remind myself that prolonged stares are not of judgement, but of concern.

In Italy, once I had the cane, young people stopped talking to me altogether. My one friend said this has nothing to do with the cane, and more to do with the fact that young people don’t know how to socialize without phones and are borderline retarded when it comes to chatting up a stranger. Only older couples or old women talked to me once I had the cane. Another reason could be, though, is that I didn’t go out at night. For two reasons—first, I was too tired/sore from the day. And second, I didn’t want to put myself in a situation I could get mugged or worse now that I was robbed from my super power of being able to run away really, really fast. I think it’s rare that men realize that women perpetually live in a state of fight or flight. We are the more vulnerable of the species. Even when we’re not injured birds.

Years ago, as I was leaving a gig in the city after midnight, I was walking down a street alone. Then, a young hooded black man turned the corner and was walking toward me. Instinctively, I crossed the street to put distance between us. He yelled at me, calling me a “racist cracker bitch.” I wanted to, though I didn’t, yell back at him that it wasn’t because he was black that I crossed the street. It was because he is a man. I was discriminating against his penis, not his skin color. But he was somewhat right about the bitch part. Since forever I have encouraged women to always wear footwear they can run in as opposed to heels. If you live in a city, you really don’t want to make yourself an easy target. Be aware of your surroundings. In general, don’t trust anyone, especially men. And unless you’re physically unable, give yourself a running head start if trouble presents itself. If your body is compromised, then it probably is best to take your parents advice and to not do things alone.

Look, , though this is one of my worse injuries, this is not the first time I’ve been injured, and I’m sure as much as I’m sure the sunrises everyday that it will not be my last. I listen to my doctor and don’t skip steps (I’m not even capable of skipping!). I’m still lifting light weights and doing core exercises to stay as strong as I can (and not get fat). In reality, I’m better at the physical maintenance than I am at the mental one. But I kind of live with my brain on the fringe, so it’s not all shocking to me that I’m struggling so much mentally at the moment.

From the moment I heard my foot crack on that beach in Italy, I knew my mental turbulence would feel heavier than my own weight does on my foot. While abroad, I knew I was simply delaying the inevitable keeping myself busy doing and seeing as much as I could. A lot of this has to do with a career as an artist. I think for me, like many other creatives, the more simple life of a regular 9-5 was never really an option. Someone told me once that you shouldn’t pursue a creative career unless there is simply nothing else you can see yourself happy doing. To this day, I think this sound advice.

To think you’ll “make it” as an artist means you must go in with some level of delusion. You must be at least a little delusional to think you’ll be the one, out of countless others, to be in the one or two percent of people who make a living as a writer (comedian, painter, etc.). Even more so now with the threat of AI. And you must know that your career’s trajectory isn’t going to just steadily go upward. It will be as unsteady as lava rocks on the beaches of Sicily, with ups and downs and plateaus in between. And you have to learn how to deal with this.

Some people are more self assured than others. Confidence is often faked, but some people’s delusion is grander than others, for better or worse. And it’s only delusion until it one day just isn’t. And you’re like, “oh hey, I’m actually doing it.”

As for me, there have been numerous times in my career I felt, “I’ve arrived,” only to be quickly humbled that I still had to work a lot harder. From day one when I first decided, all those years ago, that I was going to go all in on comedy and creative writing, I feared I was just a Dodo bird. A flightless bird. That I had wings but I simply would never fly. As I sit here and type this, I don’t know if I can honestly say that you get used to what seems like endless rejection. You do learn to not take it personally, but it still stings. For anyone looking to get into comedy or writing, my best advice besides working hard would be to get used to being heartbroken. If you can’t live with a broken heart as much as I can’t seem to live with a broken foot, do something else. Still, even now, I’d rather be the girl who jumps off of cliffs, literally and figuratively, even if it means falling on the rocks from time to time.

But I’m finding it hard to cope right now. With a broken foot. A broken heart. A broken brain. When I said I needed a break I didn’t mean of a bone. Living in my head is a fucking mad house. I want to run to the top of a hill and scream. But there is no where to run to. There is no running, period.

Today, my body fails to launch. Today, my career fails to launch. Today, the hearts will and my brains sense of reality explodes, a rocket malfunctioning through the stratosphere. And there’s nothing left but to remind yourself, “one step at time.” Even when every other step hurts.