The Bloody Doors Off

Fake news.

I did. Back in high school, during a drama club rehearsal.

You know high school auditoriums (or at least the ones built pre-1960s). Very large stage, orchestra pit below in front, then auditorium seating (wooden chairs).

We were rehearsing what we called a backstage production. Instead of facing out to a large empty room, our sets were rotated 90 degrees. Audience sat on the stage. The main curtain would be lowered to assist with the intimacy.

All the Laws of Nature. That was the play. Set in… Italy, during maybe the Renaissance? We all wore black tights as part of our costumes. I’ll loop back to this later.

I’d graduated from gopher (go for a coffee order from the cast, go for burgers from Jon Anderson’s across the road (and a few other places) in grade 9. My big break came late my freshman year. Okay, I definitely don’t remember the name of this one. But the name involved a blackout. The play started in complete darkness, and when the power goes out, the lights come up. Only the actors can’t see each other, or their surroundings. They were expecting a German art appraiser (a cameo). He comes in the final minutes of the play, Stumbles through the front door and promptly falls through a trap door on the floor and the door gets slammed shut. The guy cast in the role had to quit a week out from its debut, and the director threw me in.

Oh gods, I sucked. And I

In one performance, I didn’t duck fast enough after falling through the floor, and the door slammed on my head. (That was the closest I’d fine my name surrounded by stars.)

Slight concussion. Only no one took it seriously, including me.

Fast forward one year. Now I’m a sophomore. (Yes I know we don’t use these terms in Canada. I just don’t want to write a bland grade 10. This is my blog. My rules.) And I have to wear black tights for the role. (And this was not the most ridiculous look I’d carry in high school.)

We’re on break. I pick up my yellow Sony Walkman (cassettes) in my right hand (easter egg) and throw on my headphones with the fuzzy orange foam cushions. I remember there was some impediment that blocked my path down the middle of the stage to the dressing room. I had to scoot along the edge of the stage. The yellow curtains were drawn shut so you couldn’t see the empty chairs. Or the mass of metal music stands and metal chairs assembled in the orchestra pit. (The music room was being renovated.)

And you couldn’t see exactly where the stage ended.

I’m sixteen. I’m invincible. I’m a risk taker. I walk so close to the curtains I can feel the velvet brush my shoulder.

“Oh shit.”

The Walkman, which as I mention had been in my right hand — which should have made contact first as it was in my right hand which cleared the edge of the stage — somehow landed on the stage. Whereas I. Did. Not.

Everyone came running when they heard the musical death trap score first blood.

Once clear of the accident scene, I stood up and walked it off.

Nope, no one thought, “maybe we should take this guy to the hospital to be sure he’s okay”. And it never occurred to me.

But then the bruise came. From the top of my shoulder, down my arm, on the side of my torso, hip, thigh and calf. Unimpeded. It’s not bruises. It’s Bruise.

Try to get that into tights after. And it triggered a sizeable depressive episode. I couldn’t change in front of the cast, and present my hubris. I couldn’t be in any company. So every break, I slipped off to a nook offset the dressing room we weren’t using. After a time, one of the actors found me, and laid into me about my disrespecting everyone by isolating myself. (I guess depression wasn’t discussed back then. Definitely not with me.) I showed him the Bruise. He apologized.

A month after the final performance, a bunch of us were hanging out in the drama teacher/director’s office. (The only teacher who had one, and he allowed smoking. The other option was going out the door at the back of the room, which exited to the front of the school.) He had one of those one-a-day-sayings on his desk. One had already been discarded, and I almost stepped on it.

It read:

Paul’s Law. You can’t fall off the floor.

You’d think once in a lifetime would be a million-to-one shot. But in late March, I fell forward while picking up groceries from outside our condo, and seriously fucked up my right foot.

4 MRIs (3 for the foot, and one for my lower back) and 2 x-rays later.

What I know so far.

I have degenerative disks in my lower back. On my right side. Arthritis. Thankfully nothing’s out of place. My right foot? Well for starters, there is a cyst between the joints, which are also suffering from osteoarthritis. The fracture was a false positive. And a bone spur on my plantar in my heel. Cause of the nerve pain? I (hopefully) find out on Friday.

And if you think it started back then.

Let’s go back to when I was eight, and after bugging my mother for weeks to get a skateboard because all my friends had one and I don’t wanna be left out, I set out on my maiden voyage.

Which lasted exactly one second. Because I immediately lost my balance and fell backward. My right foot (which I tried to use on the back end — and in hindsight, I should’ve gone the other way) slammed onto the asphalt driveway. I hobbled back inside and down to the rec room, where I told my mother what happened and that I couldn’t walk and maybe I needed someone to look at it. She thought I was exaggerating. Said if I was still limping on Sunday (it was Thursday, Linda Carter was spinning into Wonder Woman on the television) she would take me to Scarborough General Hospital.

The x-ray came back. I’d chipped a fragment off my heel bone. The doctor said I’d walk with a limp the rest of my life.

I defied the odds.

Until March 25, 2024.

Now I limp (to varying degree, depending on the pain) and surmised after getting the latest results (you can’t cure osteoarthritis, but you can take Tylenol for the pain. Yippee.

The “temporary” use of a cane is looking a lot like a permanent fixture. Until the day comes I’m in a wheelchair. I’ve seen my future.

Hopefully the cyst will be gone by then, and we’ll have solved the nerve pain question.

Help. I’ve fallen. And I can’t get back up.