You’ll Never Be As Cool As Ice Cream
Some background: I broke my leg.
Smashed the thing into bits. Actually, that’s not really true but it’s good shorthand for why I was on crutches for months. And it’s really good shorthand for why I lost my mojo.
Let me back up a bit. I didn’t break my leg. I fractured my tibial plateau. This doesn’t seem like a big deal. It’s a fracture. It’s the tibia. It’s the top of the plateau just under your knee. Shouldn’t be a big deal.
It kind of is though because if the fates of life have you officially filed under “screwed” your little fracture might lead to a really big deal called Compartment Syndrome.
I don’t really know how to describe it when people ask. I generally say you have swelling that’s so intense that blood can’t flow to your muscles. The follow up on that is that if blood can’t flow to your muscles oxygen can’t flow to your muscles. And if oxygen can’t flow to your muscles, your muscles die.
And if those muscles happen to be all the muscles from the knee down, and those muscles happen to meet a Compartment Syndrome death, the thing to do then is amputate. There’s really nothing that you’ll ever be able to do down there anyway. This is one of those QED things that make logic make sense.
Let me back up a bit.
I snowboard. I like doing this very much. I like carving through frothy powder. I like carving through said powder when it’s bright and sunny. I like being in bright, sunny, frothy powder on a snowboard, on a big mountain, with a chill in the air and the world before me. And when my iPod is playing all that is good and beneficent and wonderful in the world, I like it even better.
These are all good things.
What I don’t like is being on said big mountain, on said bright and sunny day, with said beneficent music, carving through said big powder and smashing into unsaid, unseen, where-the-hell-did-you-come-from tree.
Which is exactly what I did at 8:50 a.m. on March 5, 2006 in Grand Targhee, Wyoming.
And after two surgeries, five days in a hospital bed, three months of crutches, another few weeks of walking sticks, a whole lot of physical therapy and still now a pain in my hip, knee, shin and ankle, I subsequently lost my mojo.
And was tied up for a bit, or laid out, depending on the vernacular.
Since I couldn’t go out — not to dance, romance, eat cake, drink tea, not to do nothing of anything — I sat in my cave and made pretty, somewhat wallowing, low key music. Which is what we have if you bothered to press play above.
I’ll backtrack a bit on that though: I wrote sketches of somewhat pretty, wallowing, low key music. Being tied up and laid out is tiring business and I’m just now starting to see some of these pieces through to the end. This one’s 60% there and I’m looking for someone who sings pretty to finish it off. It’s called You’ll Never Be As Cool As Ice Cream.
