Todd's Cavalcade of Whimsy

It sounded like someone took a large sheet of bubble wrap and twisted it.

In a moment, that sentence will become horrifying. But for now, let’s back up.

I consider myself a pretty intelligent person. I’m well educated, I have a decent IQ, I know that you can’t use “baking powder” and “baking soda” interchangeably in recipes even though they both have “baking” in the name and are both, in fact, “powders.” But every once and awhile, I think we all have those “special” moments. Moments where, much like how we “lose our stomachs” on roller coasters, we simply just lose that part of our brain that keeps us from acting like a functional retard.

The thing is, I broke my foot. The lamest (no pun intended) part of the whole deal was that I wasn’t even doing anything cool. I wasn’t playing any sports (neither the regular kind nor the EXTREME! kind…); I wasn’t fighting ninjas; I wasn’t diving for cover from a hail of gunfire. No, I was simply walking to the mailbox (TO THE EXTREME!!). Across a flat slab of concrete. In perfectly sunny, dry weather.

And that’s where the first sentence comes into play. I was wearing flip-flops, and somehow my right foot decided to roll completely over onto its side. I heard the bubble wrap “popping” noise emanating from my “footal region” (technical term) and immediately knew that not only had something gone terribly awry, but that I was also an incomprehensible spaz. Since my wife was away for the week, I took matters into my own hands. I administered professional-grade first aid, and then proceeded to mop the entire downstairs floor of our house.


Professional-Grade First Aid

After carefully monitoring the swelling-to-chocolate chip ratio for about 24 hours, I decided to go and get an x-ray to see if it was, indeed, broken. I went to one of those “Urgent Care” centers, thinking I’d be in and out in a reasonable amount of time. After sitting in the waiting room for 3 hours with nothing to read except “Fit Pregnancy” (from 2002, natch), I was called in, x-rayed, and released with a goofy temporary splint. I was also ordered to see a podiatrist. Two days later, the podiatrist informed me that I had some sort of special break that never heals right; therefore I had to have a cast put on, and I was to but no weight at all on it for 4-6 weeks. He also let me know there was to be no driving, or anything else that might put pressure on my foot.

After I drove home, I realized that our house is the least handicapped-accessible home ever built by man. We have stairs, raised doorjambs into the house, stairs down into the basement where our washer and dryer go, and pitched ceilings in the bathroom that make hopping over to the toilet a precarious journey fraught with peril and gratuitous cursing. And since I can’t get this danged cast wet, “showering” has been a thoroughly ridiculous and humiliating practice. I have to sit on the shower floor with my leg draped over the side of the tub and attempt to hose myself down with the hand-held showerhead. (P.S. – trying to climb out of a slippery bathtub using only the leg that is inside the tub will most likely lead to certain death, or at least a nice face-full of wall.)

After numerous failed attempts at navigating life on crutches (sure, you can make lunch standing on one leg…but pop quiz, hot shot: just how are you going to move your plateful of Manwich from the counter to the table when you have to use your hands to hold on to the crutches?), my lovely wife brought my rolling office chair downstairs so I could move around without the threat of accidentally pitching myself through a plate glass window.

The bum leg has also kept me from being able to go to the store 5 times a day like I usually do. My wife did drive me to the store last week, and I had to use that gimp cart to drive myself through aisles precariously lined with things like wine bottles and Schick Quattro razor blades. The gimp carts are a lot less fun to ride on than you always think, especially because when you put it in reverse it beeps like a dump truck as if to say, “Look at me! I can’t even walk to the mailbox without my skeletal system imploding like it was made of bad talcum powder!”

So here I sit, at least 4 more weeks to go, trapped inside my house Rear Window-style. My right foot is useless, forcing me to rely on my other leg and foot to do everything for me, like that dude in My Left Foot, except at this point I feel like he drooled and twitched considerably less than I do. If I’m not hopping somewhere, I’m crawling up the stairs or using a plastic grocery bag to hang pathetically from my crutches so I can actually move stuff from one location to another.

So that’s the story. I’d love to hear how your capacity to function in the 3-digit IQ range has shorted out lately. Sure, I’ll point and laugh. But since my hands will be clinging onto my crutches for dear life , I’ll have to use my foot to point at you …meaning you’ll have the last laugh after all.