Swingin' the Club on the Back Nine

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who had never asked me why I use a cane, and limp, and all the good stuff that must at some level make it obvious I am never going to be an Olympic contender (except perhaps in the consumption of a certain brand of dark chocolate......mmmmmm). And I, being the discrete individual I am known to be (yeah, by squirrels, maybe,) never got around to telling her about it. Sorta slipped my mind, I guess. So, I launched into a two hour diatribe about duck feet or something, and she was pretty polite about it and all. But eventually, she had to slap me and remind me I was caught in a overly-long digression, and even worse, I had repeated myself several times about the Magna Carta, or something. Mmmm, chocolate.

And I realized, its actually not that easy to explain post-club feet to the, well, uninitiated. You can either go the purely medical route, which always makes their eyes glaze over or, the over-done, boo-hoo, you mean you've never heard of club feet route, (which, if they are anyone of a certain age in the Bay Area, are quick to tell you of course they know about Club Foot, that totally hot orchestra that used to play wild music at the silent film festival, right? Yeach. You see my problem?

And to top all that off, how do you explain the whole deal, and then add, "oh, and each clubbie has a slightly different experience, depending on...things." And now ya gotta try and explain the "things," and man, by the time you're done, you swear the next time, you'll just tell them is an old war wound. Just to keep the conversation somewhere under fifteen minutes, so there's time to move on to, "Hey, did you see the new release of Avatar?" What, you think I want to talk about this all the time? Sometimes I like to talk about the first quantum moments after the Big Bang and how string theory makes it so much easier to understand, or maybe, how a hawser from the Titanic is different from a slipknot on the Andrea Doria. (Sorry, goin' sideways here.)

Actually, the best explanation I've come up with so far is to ask the person to imagine the ancient game of golf, back in prehistoric Scotland, when they still used those briarwood clubs that, well, actually looked like clubs! And then imagine those on the ends of your legs, and that buying Ferragamos was never going to be on your bucket list. And now, imagine a bunch of doctors basically thinking of your feet as Play Dough, and how they pull, and stretch, and slice and dice and stitch, and cast and brace, and do it some more. And finally, they tell you, "OK, Sally, out you go! You are pronounced normal. Buck up, and have a grand life. See ya!"

Of course, if they still don't get it. I just take off my shoes. The record so far is five point five seconds before the screams erupt. The doctors who see them never make it past two.

Man, I do need a scotch. And some chocolate. Mmmmmmmm.