KLONIE JORDAN
The big toe on my right foot is broken.
How do I know this?
Well, I’m no doctor, but one doesn’t really need any formal medical training to self-diagnose this kind of thing.
I should have already gone to see my podiatrist about it, but things have been kind of busy around here. And by “busy,” I mean I’ve been playing a lot of golf, and I know the good doctor will advise me to “stay off” that right foot until the pain subsides and/or the toe mends itself.
But here’s the rub. If I stay off that foot, I’m going to miss some prime golf-playing weather. Besides, how much worse could it get? What happens if I’m out and about and the pain in the big toe becomes unbearable? What do I do then? Call a toe truck?
How did it get broken, you ask? Well, it was a combination of laziness and my vivid imagination. The wife’s shower cap was lying on the bathroom floor when I went in there to take a shower, and I should have picked it up and put it away. But instead, while looking around the room, I noticed, at the other end of it, a bathroom scale and a cosmetic bottle that had apparently been accidentally dropped. They were about three feet apart.
For a moment, I imagined myself to be Adam Vinatieri, arguably the greatest NFL place-kicker of all time, and I saw that scale and that bottle as uprights, daring me to try and kick that shower cap between them.
I, not being one to back down from a challenge, lined up that shower cap and proceeded to give it a mighty kick.
This, as it turns out, was a terrible idea, because when I followed through with my barefoot kick, I almost lost my balance and tried to adjust my kick in mid-motion to keep from falling.
You know how the Terminator would run all available diagnostic and evaluation data through his computer brain before deciding how to dispense a lethal dose of firepower in the appropriate direction? Well, that’s what I tried to do. Still, my tiny brain’s evaluation and diagnostic skills aren’t quite as sharp as the Terminator’s futuristic computer-brain ones are, and my effort to regain my balance in mid-kick proved fruitless. The kick was awkward, clumsy, and just plain goofy. Looking back now, I can imagine it must have resembled what Frankenstein would look like if he were figure skating and attempted a triple loop jump.
I made contact with the shower cap on the down-kick, but my follow-through caught the side of the cabinet, which resulted in a dull thud and a very sharp pain emanating from my big toe to my brain, which said, “What are you doing? You can’t rebalance yourself in mid-kick. You’re an old man, for Pete’s sake. Now look at what you’ve done to your big toe, you moron.” My brain always throws in a mid- to severe name-calling insult at the end of its responses.
So, I went and played golf that day with a broken big toe, and I didn’t play very well because it’s difficult to swing a golf club while leaning to one side.
This whole incident has left me with several unanswered questions, such as:
— Is there more than one bone in each toe?
— Can you move about with a broken big toe without causing more damage to your foot and ending up looking like The Elephant Man?
— If push comes to shove, can you walk without a big toe?
— Who invented the shower cap?
— What if you wanted to keep other parts of your body dry while taking a shower, say, for example, your knee? Would you call that a “kneecap?”
Anyway, these complex inquiries aside, I had the chance last week to play golf at Hilton Head Island, a place I had never visited but a destination I had heard many wonderful things about.
So, I packed my bags and headed out there (or is it “down there?”), broken big toe and all, to see what all the fuss was about. My brain, although tiny (see earlier Terminator comparison), knew the island would be a bustling place.
Still, I was hoping for something like the kind of island on which Gilligan was stranded, except with luxurious golf courses and amenities. I believe these things really existed on Gilligan’s Island. That’s why they never tried all that hard to be rescued. Who wants to be rescued from a 5-star golf resort?
I returned home a tad early from my island excursion, mostly because I wasn’t playing very well, largely because my big toe was hurting like the dickens. One of the guys we played with one day asked me what my handicap was, and I told him, “Well, right now it’s the big toe on my right foot. I think it’s broken.”
He looked at me the way Thurston Howell III sometimes looked at Gilligan.
Oh well.
Now that I’m back home and comfortably seated behind the keyboard in my man cave, I look back on that weekend island excursion with fond memories.
But still, I have questions, like:
— Who is this Hilton guy?
— And why did they name an island after his head and not the rest of him?
I’m sure all this will be explained to us one day in that great golf course resort in the sky.
Meanwhile, I need to get some relief from this toe, so I suppose I’d better make an appointment with my podiatrist.
The first thing he’s going to ask me is how I injured that toe.
“You’re not going to believe this, Doc,” I will tell him. “Do you remember Adam Vinatieri?”
(Klonie Jordan is a retired newspaper editor who still writes about such things as the joy of kidney stones, those hospital gowns that don’t have any backs, stalking the elusive McRib sandwich, hand-tostinger combat with killer bees, why your wife moves your stuff, and other subjects of vital interest. You can contact him at [email protected]). RETIRED LEDGER EDITOR
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