Sometimes, when you are in times of need, the precisely correct item will find its way to you, helping you navigate troubled waters.

It can be a person, a book, a piece of clothing (is this what The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants was about?), a lucky charm — again, it can be just about anything. It can make bad times make a little more sense.

This is one of those stories. This is a story about Jared Sullinger and his scooter.

“I just like to scoot,” Sullinger, the injured Raptors forward, said on Thursday. “I like to scoot and annoy people. I do what I do.”

Sullinger hurt his left foot in the first preseason game for his new club, and had surgery to insert a screw into the fifth metatarsal on his left foot in late-October. The Raptors have stayed away from official timetables, although initial reports had his recovery period between two to three months. There is little reason to believe that has changed, although both player and team are sanguine about operating with caution.

In the days after the surgery, Sullinger was hobbling around on crutches, able only to put pressure on his right foot. As anybody who has ever been on crutches knows, they are annoying things — awkward to use, and frustrating to lug around.

Eventually, an alternative came along — a scooter, which Sullinger could rest his left leg on, with his right leg hanging on to the side.

“In my mind, it was a Rolls-Royce,” Sullinger said. “In some of my teammates’ minds, it was a Honda Civic. I don’t really know the make of it. But it was just right for me.”

In reality, it is a product from Knee Walkers Canada. And although Sullinger was not originally thrilled by the idea of being the injured new guy riding around on a scooter, he quickly warmed to it.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much all it was: having fun in a shitty situation, honestly,” Sullinger said.

“It was user-friendly, pretty user-friendly. You just put your leg up and scoot and keep your balance. Don’t lean one way, or else you’re going to be flying.”

Over the first month-plus of the season, Sullinger, in between pestering his coaches with questions about the team’s philosophies, has been seen doing all sorts of things on the scooter. He has scooted through the Raptors’ locker room. He has scooted up the ramp leading from the court at the Air Canada Centre. He has taken set shots while kneeling on the scooter.

Most notably, however, Sullinger has taken to inserting himself into the background of televised interviews — basically annoying his teammates — on the scooter.

Sullinger, by nature, seems to be something of a feces-disturber. While doing the interview for this story, he repeatedly tapped Raptors travel manager Kevin DiPietro in the ribs with one of his crutches while DiPietro was trying to have a separate conversation.

Sullinger enjoys — all in good fun, of course — agitating his teammates even more. He said his main targets were Patrick Patterson, Terrence Ross and Norman Powell, the players he talks to most on the team. He would scoot by them frequently, just to get reactions.

Sullinger’s favourite target was Kyle Lowry, who “hated when I was just scooting around for no reason.” Lowry frequently told Sullinger to stop rolling around in his general vicinity.

“(He would tell me to) go sit down somewhere,” Sullinger said. “Kyle, he just hates the scooter overall.”

Sullinger has mostly liked what he has seen from his 12-6 team from the sidelines. He said that he appreciates that the Raptors have been able to win ugly games, and win games without multiple starters (including himself).

One would think that would make Sullinger more anxious to help with the cause, to join in on the fun. However, Sullinger does not present as a worrier.

“I’m not really anxious at all. The more you get anxious, the more you start to do stuff too early,” Sullinger said. “The more you start to do stuff too early, the bigger setbacks you have. Keep my emotions under wraps and understand it’s a process.

“It’s not a struggle. It’s the bigger picture. I’m just looking at the bigger picture. They don’t need me now. They don’t need me tomorrow. They don’t need me three weeks from now. They don’t need me eight weeks from now. What matters is that we’re all coming together at the right time, and that’s in April, May and June. Right now, everybody understands that the games matter now. To be the team (that we want to be, though), we’ve got to start clicking at the right time. You can’t start clicking unless you’re fully healthy. And I’ve got a lot of time to get there.”

Nonetheless, Sullinger is at least making some progress. This week, he has gone from primarily using the scooter to using the crutches more and more. He can now put what he described as 50 percent weight on his left foot, and he wants to get re-acclimated with walking. A sensible decision.

Yet, there was Sullinger on Thursday afternoon, with the Raptors wrapping up practice, back on his scooter, wheeling around the BioSteel Centre’s courts. A habit has been formed. We all have crutches we lean on to get by during difficult times, and they often aren’t crutches at all.