For those of you who have not seen me in the last couple of weeks, I am happy to tell you that I am now out of the "walking boot." My left ankle is still not at 100 percent, but I reckon progress is being made. For those of you who have no clue to what I am referring, I'll give you the "Readers Digest" version of what happened.
Last November I was covering a football game for the newspaper and had a "sideline collision" with a player. Not anyone's fault, just "one of those things" that happens from time to time. If you have ever seen "near misses" between football players and sideline reporters, I can attest that on (hopefully) rare occasions, the "near miss" turns into a full blown tackle. Ironically, the young man who inadvertently ran into me is the younger brother of our summer intern here at the newspaper. Well, the "sideline tackle" resulted in a rather extensively fractured ankle that required immediate surgery the next afternoon, followed by about 10 weeks in a cast. I had a second surgery on Jan. 22, in order to remove a couple of screws. It was at that time that I was put into the boot. While it was good to finally be able to walk on my left foot, the fun of wearing the boot waned rather quickly. Thanks to arthritis setting into my ankle, I was "in the boot" longer than anticipated.
This brings me to Monday, June 15, when I received a new ankle brace in the mail. This new device is much less cumbersome than the old boot. I am even able to slip a real shoe over it. One humorous side-effect to this is the fact that I am now wearing a pair of shoes in which the right shoe has a good seven months of wear that the left shoe has not experienced. It was around the second day of wearing a shoe on my left foot that someone asked, "Did you get a new pair of shoes?" I responded that the left shoe appeared "new" but it was actually the same age as the right shoe. A couple of people here at work had not even noticed that the boot was no longer there. I would think they would have noticed earlier, simply from the difference in the sound of me walking across the room. Because of the numerous fasteners on the boot, it made a distinct sound with every step.
This little experience makes me wonder about the many times we get so accustomed to something that when it changes, we hardly notice. How often do we do that with the people in our lives as well? We get so accustomed to the sound they make when they walk across the room that we begin to take for granted that they will always be there, just like that walking boot.
Take a look around and try to notice the little things that may not have been there before. Try not to take for granted the things, or people, that may be gone before we know it.
I have been told that there may be yet another ankle surgery in my near future, so I should hang onto the boot. Perhaps my friends here will hear that same old "boot sound" again in November; just for old times sake. Have a safe weekend here on "the sunny side."