From my toe’s point of view, that’s an absolute ledge. A cliff. A literal stumbling block.
Look at that crack in the sidewalk and tell me that I, a grown woman walking up the street while holding the leashes of two 12-pound dogs, should have seen that coming.
Well, possibly I should have, yes. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, no. Did I walk into it at the brisk pace of 4 m.p.h., which can drive enough force to break a toe head-on? That is a fact. The technician who X-rayed my foot was impressed by the mushroom shape my bone now had, but not surprised. This shows you, he told me fervently, the immense amount of force with which you move through the world! Swinging your foot forward at a normal pace contains bone-shattering momentum! You’d think a man of his experience might have seen everything by now, for broken bones are his bread and butter. It could be that working in a medical field allows him access to mood enhancing drugs; that might explain his intensity. Or maybe he was just excited to open my eyes to the terrible physics all around me.
As the nurse escorted me back to the waiting room a core memory came back to me and I tried to explain to her that when I was 15 I took public high school driver’s ed. One day, instead of sitting in a portable classroom learning how to drive a stick shift on a clunky old simulator, our class got on a bus and we were taken to the parking lot of the county football stadium. Orange cones were laid out everywhere and a dozen random cars were parked with their keys on the front seat. These real cars were for us to practice driving! After being warned not to act like jackasses we were set loose. We scattered like monkeys and in the melee of trying to grab the best car, my friend Alan took a small red sedan and I jumped into a white panel van. I revved it up and promptly (because I was a jackass) got myself into position and rammed the back of Alan’s sedan. This so delighted Alan’s best friend, Al, that Al started doing donuts to celebrate.
After the driver’s ed teacher used his bullhorn to get us all to calm down, we practiced navigating around the orange cones and learning to parallel park. Then we put the keys back in our cars and took turns riding the Convincer. The Convincer was a car seat on a short inclined track. It’s like a three-foot section of a roller coaster that starts you at the top and slams you to a stop at the bottom to allow you to get the feel of the impact of a low-speed crash. Our teacher set it to replicate the effects of a crash at 7 m.p.h. and I watched my classmates get whiplash while I waited for my turn. It was all fun and games until I strapped in and my head snapped forward and back when I hit the bottom. Seven miles per hour was enough to make the seatbelt give me a collarbone ache. (This video shows people’s hilarious reactions at 5 m.p.h. Youngpeople, I should note. If I rode that thing now my spine would crumble and my head would roll away. Hooray for airbags.)
Anyway, after my X-ray the nurse escorted me back to the exam room and on our ten-second walk I tried to explain the Convincer to her, how I had learned about the forces all around us way back in 10th grade. She listened politely while I struggled to explain the technology of long ago, but our time was short and she was probably thinking, That’s nice, granny, have a seat until the doctor comes in to poke your toe with a stick and give you a hideous velcro-and-plastic boot to wear for the next four weeks.
Four weeks!?
I got home and threw that boot in the trash and put on my comfy slippers. Three weeks now it’s been! Hobbling about the neighborhood in my slippers! At Day 14 I definitely began to wonder if there was someone I could sue. You see those ads for personal injury lawyers but the whole business seems a little scheme-y, and really, how much compensation would a sane judge award me? I haven’t lost wages, and the urgent care fee was only $35, plus $2.97 for the hideous boot. My main complaint is that I’ve got a fat, bruised toe and I’m bored of wearing the same big fancypants shearling-lined Birkenstocks every day. Bored of comfort, you say? Bored of quality? Bored of this weird Birkenstock styling that led a disappointed woman to sell them to me on Ebay because they just weren’t for her? I know how it sounds but can you imagine the tedious fashion choices I’ve been making? Let me tell you, these puffy clogs are nobody’s style, and here’s why: because you can only wear with them what theywant you to wear with them. “Boyfriend” jeans and big hairy sweaters. And an adorable hat that you pull over one eye just so and look shyly at the camera because you don’t know how pretty you are. That’s the look these clogs demand that you build every day from the ground up, and that’s exactly the kind of pain and suffering no judge will take seriously. Your honor, I’m tired of dressing like a Sundance catalog. I’m not an influencer, I’m just an old woman with a dream (of wearing sneakers again).
So I’m not suing anybody, but I did lodge a complaint on the city Public Works Department website. I wrote, with the remarkable restraint that I’m known for because I want to avoid sounding self-pitying, “Two slabs of sidewalk in front of [address redacted] have separated and created a substantial ledge, which caused me to trip and break my toe. It's a hazard.” The city immediately put an order in to have the sidewalk fixed, and soon, I hope, for the sake of all toes in Santa Barbara, this chapter will be closed.