I love playing with my kids. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the delighted laughter of your 3 year old son, or the cries for mercy from your 8 year old son. Equally amusing are the terrified screams of your 4 year old daughter as you race toward her, tickling fingers extended, ready for the attack. (Usually women run toward me, fainting and screaming with sheer excitement, so chasing women is a completely new experience for me.) In any case, I discovered recently that Ava, my 4 year old daughter, thinks it is hilarious when someone gets hurt. Instead of compassionately asking if you’re OK, she points, covers her mouth, and breaks into unadulterated laughter. It was with this goal in mind, that in the midst of a fun night of rollicking and wrestling, I rolled off of the Lovesac and took off toward Ava as she stood in the hallway.
My goal was to start to chase her and then jump onto the wooden floor of the hallway and let my stockinged feet slip out from under me as I reached for her. I had done this maneuver countless times before with great results. She always thought it was hilarious, and while I’m no Hollywood stuntman, I’d like to think that my falls are somewhat authentic looking. Unfortunately, I failed to take into account the little molding strip that holds the carpet down at the edge of the great room. As I started into my feet first slide I clipped that wooden molding with the top of my left big toe, and I quite authentically fell. I heard Ava’s peals of laughter, as she rounded the corner to hide in her bedroom. Somewhat satisfied with the results I nonetheless realized that I had hurt myself.
A few minutes later I had both of my socks off and was trying to determine if my left toe was more crooked than my right toe. My feet are so grotesquely misshapen that it was difficult to tell if something was wrong or if that was just how my toe looked. Jaron was convinced that it was broken, and Lianne, shocked by the overall appearance of my feet started taking off all of the children’s socks and inspecting their feet to make sure that they hadn’t inherited my deformity. I was sitting there in pain, feeling embarrassed, and needing comfort, and instead of tending to me Lianne is insulting my feet and indeed my very heritage. Unbelievable. I did hear a muttered “Thank God”, so I assume that the kids are all normal.
While Lianne checked the kids I decided that I didn’t want my feet to be any uglier than they already are, and I didn’t want my future as a multi-sport stud to be in jeapordy. So, with thoughts of Dad’s bent pinky finger dancing in my head, I determined to go to the doctor’s and get my foot X-ray’d. Xrays did indeed show a non-displaced fracture on the outside of my left, big toe. The Doc taped it to the next toe and said it’ll heal on it’s own.
That pretty much concludes the story, except to note that the toe is extremely bruised and swollen. I’ll post pictures before long. It’s quite impressive. Lianne has no compassion for me, however, and when I showed co-workers their only comment was that my foot looked like it belonged to a hobbit. So, all forms of sympathy and pity are welcome. Hopefully I’ll be in decent enough shape over Christmas to play some basketball, that is my goal. If my play is in any way inferior, it’s the toe, it’s gotta be the toe.