Shot 'O Wha?

My foot is broken. Long story- it could be worse. It could be better. Such is my life.

I decided to move forward this past Saturday, helping a friend in need of some friendly hands help him move. Since I had already mapped out a plan of attack for the prior week's packing schedule to aid him in organization and hitting goals, I knew what we were walking in to: Boxes and neat piles of organized chaos. (Do as I say, never as I do, please.) Instead, what we walked in to was chaos... that had been kicked around for 12 months, growing dust and CD limbs with slight hoarding undertones. My previously realistic goal of helping unpack boxes and rearrange furniture in said new place became lofty and laughable. Instead, I stayed in the old apartment, packing and sweating and sticking my swelling foot in the air every twenty minutes to help my pain killers do a little something more than taste funny. I had help. His mother, in a full mechanical knee brace, not only packed alongside me, but she was excellent company as I watched my more limber friends pouring sweat off their shoulders, packing and unpacking the moving van. If it wasn't 100 degrees, and we weren't moving boxes, and my foot wasn't broken, it would have been the perfect day. I will settle for great, most of the time, though.

My head and heart were a lot happier to help than my stress fracture. And later that night, as I lay immobile on my couch with an ice pack on my elevated foot, I thought back on my favorite part of the day. I have been doing that a lot lately. Is that bizarre? Taking a step out of reality to observe it? I feel this need to capture vignettes outside of the 8 to 5. Here is what I came up with:

After hours of feeling pain in his heel, Ben-jammin decided to take his sneaker off only to find an earring post had punctured the rubber sole of his sneaker and was standing up straight, brazenly even, in his shoe. It had also managed to pierce the bottom of his heel, which was lightly bleeding. And as I made a scrunched up, "That sucks" face, I look up and see his eyes widen with horror as the realization that someone else's bodily secretions at some level were inserted in to his foot. And we were in Jersey City! More people could be culprits on that one street than in most people's entire towns. And his question?

"Oh no! Does this mean I have to get an AIDS shot?"

I hear those are the worst!