A BIT ABOUT A BOOT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (09-01-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     So, I did something to my foot and now I'm in a walking boot. This boot is made for walking, but that doesn't seem like it's first choice for things to do. Walking is about the last thing this contraption wants to do, but I guess that's the point. Plus they only give you one boot, and it has about a two-inch heel. I suppose I could get one for my left foot and go on tour with Elton John. But right now I'm listing to the left, a little like the Titanic. Actually the similarities are striking, in that we both must have struck something. I tried to ignore the injury at first, and "play through it." I was "toughing it out" thinking that playing tennis while weeping uncontrollably was the manly thing to do, but finally I went to see a doctor.

     The moment you make your first appointment with a podiatrist, you are from that day forward officially old. I thought it was a tendon injury that I had a few years ago, and that he would tell me not to play tennis for a couple weeks, because I could re-injure it, and not to play the piano for at least a month, because I'm lousy at it. I stood up, shook his hand and I was just about to say, "Well I guess I won't be seeing you again until I do something else stupid, so, see you soon," when he said, "Just to be on the safe side, let's get an x-ray." Folks, when a doctor says "Just to be on the safe side," get the out that door and run as fast as you can. With my bum foot I knew the x-ray technician would have caught me, but I think I still could have outrun the podiatrist. He said that it isn't a bad break, but what exactly does that mean? I know divorced couples who said the same thing and it was a complete disaster.

     He told me I had a "Jones Fracture." I said, "Jones? Who the hell is Jones? Is he the guy who first broke his foot, or is he the first guy who stepped on somebody's foot and broke it?" If I was Jones, I wouldn't want people associating my name with something negative, especially an x-ray negative. It's like if I was at a meeting at work and somebody said, "This is a good time to use the 'Melén Spreadsheet.'" And I say, "Oh, so you're familiar with the Melén Spreadsheet?" And he says, "Yes, we use it to get people to unlearn the software so we can re-train them correctly."

     The dumbest thing is that I don't even know how or when I broke the foot. Guys are like that sometimes. My wife asked me a couple weeks ago, "Why are you bleeding from your arm?" I had no idea I was bleeding, so I didn't have time to get a story together about how I was chased by a secret agent trying to get the microfilm, and he was shooting at me but missed, and then he ran out of bullets and threw the gun at me which opened up a considerable flesh wound. The microfilm was from the library reference section so I'm not sure why he wanted it, that was the secret part I guess. But you get to a certain age and there's no reasonable causal relationship between action and result. You could jump out of a plane from 6,000 feet, land in a tree and break only a few branches, or you could step out of a car and fracture your tibia in three places.

     I guess I must have done it playing tennis. I certainly hope so, because it would imply to the guys that I play with that I'm exerting much more effort than they currently think is possible. And my opponent could boast that he broke my serve AND my foot at the same time, so it's a win-win for all of us, except my foot. One of the other guys on my court saw me last week with the boot and said, yeah, at our age everything breaks twice as often, and then takes twice as long to heal. I told him I agree with everything he said except for the part about us being the same age. I would have put my foot down on that one, but it would have hurt like hell.

     One unexpected benefit is that the cat runs away from me whenever he sees me with the boot on. We got this cat from the veterinarian's office because he was abandoned by someone, maybe someone who just came back from the podiatrist. They told us it was a rescue cat, which I don't believe, because the cat has never rescued us from ANYTHING. Where was he when I broke my foot?

     So the doctor said I have to stay off the foot for a few weeks. He said the same thing about alcohol once when I was supposed to take some sort of a test for my liver, and we were scheduled to take a trip to New Orleans in the meantime. I picture this being about as successful.