Ankle Biters

Nestled among the ads for X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys in comic books was usually an ad for a fake cast. The drawing featured a guy proudly showing his cast while two girls consoled him.  "Avoid unpleasant tasks! Gain sympathy," the ad promised.

This was highly appealing, as these were two things I was always on the lookout for. I never broke any bones, so the thought of wearing a cast seemed cool and exciting. Girls would probably look at me differently, my friends could write stuff on it, and best of all, I'd get out of yardwork. Yes, a whole exciting world would open up to me once I broke some bones.

I never ordered the cast because it was expensive and I couldn't figure out how to trick my parents into thinking I had broken my arm and somehow gotten to the doctor's office to get it set without them knowing. I put it out of my mind, except for those days when I had to rake or pick up mangoes and wished I had a fake cast to end the misery and injustice of my child labor.

My luck held and I never broke a bone, even after a lifetime of foolish decisions and risky stunts.  In fact, probably the closest I've come happened last week.

I was out running last Thursday evening. I was feeling good. In fact, I was thinking about running the whole 7 mile trail which I hadn't done in a while. I was pretty close to doing some air guitar/drumming to certain motivational songs, as well as some Rocky-esque shadow boxing.

Then I hit a hole. My foot went in, twisted, then tripped me on to the street. As a man, my first reaction was to get up, pretend it didn't hurt, and keep running, only maybe at a slower pace. Then I got those weird stomach pains that signal, "Yeah, I think that really messed you up. You should probably limp home."

Holy crap, was that a long walk home.

As with all injuries or problems, I figured I just needed a good night's sleep and everything would be all fixed up in the morning.

A week later, my girlfriend noted that I still had "corpse feet," thanks to my swollen and purple toes and ankle.

First night. I used to have an ankle.

It looked bad. So bad that I kept making up "C.S.I" opening scenes in my head.


"Looks like this guy....was defeated," the desensitized detective would say, right before Roger Daltry screamed to signal another episode of gross forensic mysteries, possibly focusing on foot decapitation for creepy sex purposes.


So I started wearing a boot. It's a big, clunky, pre-cast thing that takes about 3 hours to strap into and makes me walk like Frankenstein.

Couple things I've noticed during my recovery:

One, architects love to put stairs all over the damn place. Houses, businesses, you name it; apparently a building isn't complete until a set of rickety or narrow stairs are installed.

Secondly, I don't feel I'm getting as much sympathy and freedom from work as the ads promised a young me. Even though when I'm making a difficult work call or driving around town with a throbbing ankle, I'm saying "Come on. I have a busted ankle," that doesn't seem to have any effect on people's reaction to me.

About the only thing I was able to get out of was mowing the yard, although paying the guy $15 just made me feel like a puss. I could feel Hank Hill shuddering as I forked over the cash.

Since I don't have an actual cast, I also can't have people write on it, so I'm really not getting the full effect here.

I'm beginning to think that ads in comic books have completely lied to me.

Head Games

You know when you get an idea stuck in your head and it rattles around in there like the chorus to a catchy song and you can't get it out no matter what you do? This happens to me fairly often.

Lately I've been thinking about head injuries.

I'm not really scared of getting hit in the head, really, it's more like I have this idea that sometime when I get older I'll get a stroke or dementia or hit in the head with a coconut and have a complete personality change.

I'd like to think I have a fairly good disposition at the moment. For whatever reason people seem to like me, so I guess I'm doing something right.

But all that could change with one future accident.

Would I become belligerent? Racist? Would I turn into one of those guys waving misspelled placards and screaming about the government? The worst part would be overhearing people say, "Yeah, Scott's kind of a dick now, but he was a great guy before that coconut fell on his head."

And that's the greatest tragedy of my future personality change; nobody I'd meet since my accident would know how awesome I was before. It's pretty sad when you think about it.

Of course by then I would have alienated all my friends and family, and would only have the staff at the poor people nursing home to scream at.

The funny part about all this is that I know that the odds of something like that happening to me about equal to winning the lottery or getting eaten by a shark, and I realize that this is one of the dumber things taking up space in my head, but it still bounces through my head every once in a while like the chorus of a classic rock song.

And again, I'm not actually really worried about this happening, but if I'm wearing a helmet the next time you see me, try to understand.