David's Story
How about a couple of amusing stories about clubbed feet. That's right. Amusing. When I was nine months old, I had my first surgery on my feet -- to lengthen my Achilles' tendon. My mother tells me how after I came home from the hospital, I refused to laugh, smile or even look at her. She assumed I was angry at her for leaving me in that place -- as I would gladly interact with anyone else in the family. One night, apparently, I discovered a way to exact my revenge. I wedged one leg through the bars of my crib, turned my leg slightly, and pried the plaster cast off. It fell to the floor with a thud. My bleary-eyed and startled mother came into the room to find the cast on the floor, and me grinning in the crib. The next day she took me to the hospital, and a new cast was applied at an exorbitant cost.
That night my poor mother was awakened again by a thud emanating from my room. She came in - once again -- to find a cast (this one from the other leg) lying on the floor. Dreading the idea of going to the hospital to have another one replaced, she found some razor blades and proceeded to spend the rest of the night carefully cutting the cast in half lengthwise. That done, she put my leg back in the cast and taped the two halves together. She took me to the doctor to see if what she had done would be all right. It was.
That night -- yes I pried off the other cast, and my mother spent that night painstakingly cutting that cast in half. I took off one cast every night for the next few weeks. Although I never let my mother have an uninterupted night's sleep during that period, at least once she had cut both casts in half, they were easily reapplied in just a few minutes.
Another story: Recently I was at the beach with my wife, and I was eager to try out a new pair of flippers. I put the flippers on sitting on the beach and left my wife reading on her beach towel. For anyone who doesn't know, walking into the surf with flippers on is impossible even for those with normal feet. The standard procedure is to walk backwards into the surf. This I have done many times without incident. Except on that day. One of the results of my condition is that I have knee caps which, from time to time, tend to dislocate. If you have the same trouble, you know how painful and, um, "inconvenient," that can be. Well, as I was gracefully enetering the ocean backwards that day, a small but potent wave clipped me at just the right angle to dislocate my left knee. I instantly "took a seat" and struggled desperately to put my knee cap back in place with small but extremely annoying waves smacking in me in the head every couple of seconds!
My knee cap back in place, I still couldn't stand up. I yelled to my wife about thiry yard away. She didn't hear me. I frantically waved my arms... did I mention she was reading? I now screamed and waved my arms. She looked up and pleasantly waved back... then went back to her reading. I screamed and waved again my wife looked around, then noticed a cute harbor seal poking her head out of the water a few yards away from me. My wife smiled, nodded, pointed at the seal... and went back to her book. I began to fantasize holding her head under water if I ever made it onto dry land again. Did she think I was sitting down in the surf because I LIKED getting my sinuses filled with salt water? I yelled again. This time she looked up puzzled if not annoyed. I waved more frantically, trying to look as I were drowning in two feet of water. After a moment she walked down the beach, and then, standing over me, knee deep in the Pacific Ocean, asked what the hell I thought I was doing. I politely explained (between getting hit by waves) that if she didn't help me up RIGHT NOW, she would read her next novel in Davy Jones'locker!
I'm pleased to state that she is still alive and that we're still married, and that I now put my flippers on after I have entered the water.
Like many people with clubbed feet, I often feel more at home in the water than on land. Have you ever noticed that if you squint and use your imagination, clubbed feet can look a little like a fish's fins?
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