I’ve been involved with The Girl for about six years now and was pretty sure she had heard all my “stories” at least twice and was past the point of feigning interest and was now at the point of holding her hand up and saying, “I’ve heard this before.” But the other night I surprised us both with a story she had never heard. And I thought my canon was exhausted half way through our second date. It all started when I was getting ready to go out with my crazy nurse friends and she noted I had on high heels.
“They aren’t that high”
“You never wear heels.”
“I know. I can’t.”
“You can’t? Why?”
“Well aside from the fact I look like a big drag queen in high heels. My left ankle is toast.”
She looked at me amazed, not knowing this about me so I launched into a long story about why I don’t wear high heels. When I was twenty I was on a date with a guy. He was a nice guy, uber Star Wars nerd, wicked smart so I wanted to impress this young man with my wit, good sense and grace. We went to the movies, Empire Strikes Back and immersed ourselves into the galaxy far far away. One of us was so immersed she didn’t notice her left foot had fallen asleep and when she got up from her chair she turned on her completely paralysed and numb left foot and crumbled on the floor like a Storm Trooper struck by a light saber. I’m groping around on the floor, trying to recover the contents of my purse and my dignity as he is helping me up. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this and I remember he stifled a laugh and when I saw him laughing I decided to laugh it off, too. Of course, he asked what happened and if I was ok. “Just fine” I lied as I stepped on my left as my entire leg begged me for the love of the Empire just sit down, take those damn shoes off and hop to the car and home. Instead, I continued to walk up the steps to the exit and yes, I would love it if you pulled the car up to the front. Silently, I was sobbing in pain as I waited for him. A sensible girl would have said: “You know Gary, I’m such a klutz and I’m really hurt, can we call it a night, I need to ice my ankle.” Yeah but that girl wasn’t me. I was too self-conscious so I went along for the rest of the evening. Besides that we had reservations at my favorite restaurant: Jennivine. A lovely little room in an old house with a decently priced price fix menu. Frankly, I didn’t want to miss this meal because it was an expensive restaurant and I longed for the food they served. It was down the street from the restaurant I worked and we would trade food so I knew what I missing. I wish I could remember what we talked about and had for dinner. I probably drank several glasses of wine to blot out the eye bleeding pain rocketing up my leg . And then another couple glasses of wine to help me forget just how swollen my foot and leg was becoming. Fortunately, he didn’t ask me if I wanted to go dancing. I probably would have gone just to be polite. It’s so much important to be polite and not draw attention to yourself even if you’re going to be crippled and thirty years later blogging from a wheelchair. After dinner he drove me home and we said good night in front of my building. Sucking back tears, I merrily waved as he pulled away and then crept through the security door, sat on the bottom step to remove my shoes and take a look at my ankle. It wasn’t pretty, either. Swollen roughly three times the size of my right and with blue, black and red streaks climbing my leg. I couldn’t walk at this point and crawled, literally crawled up the stairs. My roommate was in her jammies ready for bed. I limped into the living room and burst into tears: “I think I broke my ankle!” (and I wonder where my kid gets the drama thing?) She took a look at it like she knew what she was looking at and I took a look at it like I knew what I was looking at and we came to the conclusion based on the late hour, the night of the week and appearance and lack of health insurance it wasn’t broken. Ah the resilence of the young. I was waiting tables the next afternoon and dancing a week or so later. Mind you I only wore three inch heels for the dancing. I never saw uber Luke Skywalker again. I’m not sure why. He probably liked his women able to stay upright when they were sober.
So this leaves me wondering what else TG doesn’t know about me. Poor thing is going to have to wade through a bunch of repeats to discover the new bits and pieces.
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