When I was a kid, I would often dream of being some kind of bionic man. A cross between Inspector Gadget and Remo Williams.
The part that always seems to get glossed over in those movies is that the guy getting all of the cool hardware had to go through some intense pain before the fancy accoutrements arrived.
I mean, the dude got seriously hurt.
In real life, most of us will rarely go through a dramatic incident in which we are chased down by evil henchmen, put through the ringer and left for dead.
Instead, we just grow old. And the gadgets we get are irritating, made of plastic and not nearly as cool as a rocket-fueled turbo blaster.
I am speaking of course of my new ankle brace.
It turns out that the annoying pain that started in my heal about six months ago wasn’t just a cramp or stress from a comical lack of flexibility (though the last one certainly doesn’t help).
Apparently, sometime in the last year or two, I managed to sever three ligaments in my left foot.
The good news is that there are no nerves attached to these ligaments, so I felt no pain.
The bad news is that my poor achilles has been working overtime to keep my foot from just sort of flopping around all loosey goosey and making me limp to the side as if being directed by Mr. Humpty Hump himself.
And now I have an ankle brace.
“Is this reversible,” I asked my podiatrist. (sign number 89 that I’m getting old… I now have a podiatrist)
“Not really,” he said. “We’ll have you do some physical therapy and see if we can strengthen a few other muscles around the joint so they can ease the stress on your heel.”
“Should I stop going to the gym?” I asked.
“You’ve been going to the gym,” he asked, suspiciously.
“Well,” I answered. “Once or twice a year.”
“You can actually start going more,” he told me.
“What about sports. I do play softball regularly.”
I watched as he tried to think of a polite way to inform me that softball was not really a sport.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Just wear the brace. It will give you support and keep you stable.”
I wanted to ask what I should do if I hit a line drive to the fence and was tempted to leg out a triple, but I realized it would take me longer to get the triple than it would for him to come up with an answer that didn’t offend me.
So, now I’ve got this piece of hardware strapped to my ankle. I’m supposed to wear it all day at work, lest a trip to the copier send me to the emergency room.
In my head, it makes cool hydraulic noises like those cars that cruise around in rap videos, but in reality, it’s just a piece of plastic with some foam on it.
Tucked away beneath my pant legs, so the world can remain unaware at how feeble I am.
My secret bionic ankle.
I’ll see if I can resist the urge to shout “Go go gadget ankle!” the next time I hit a ball out of the infield.
