Boot Stories

It's funny how many conversations a gimp boot can start.

They always start the same...

Random Person: "Ooooo [looking down at boot], What'd you do?"
Me: "Stress fracture in my shin."
Random Person: "[Now wincing like it's causing them pain] Oh man, How'd you do that?"
Me: "From running; it's not as bad as it looks."

From here the conversation will take one of two turns, it'll either 1. end in an awkward series of face squints and mumbles from the other person as I nod and smile then we both awkwardly walk away, or 2. the other person will continue on to tell me their story about when they had a boot and what happened.

Usually it ends with the first, but more often than you'd think, I find myself stopped for a good five minutes or so listening to a random stranger's boot story. When I decided to start counting the number of stories I heard, I counted 6 in the span of 2.5 days while I was in Austin. SIX! Who knew there were so many injured people out there?

In the beginning I found myself just listening to people's stories as not to be rude and cut them off, but now I find myself looking forward to running into random strangers and their random stories. They're always different and they usually, more often than not, are much worse injuries than mine and act as a reminder that I need to stay on the positive side; thankful for only a stress fracture.

On a funnier note, I finally thought I figured out why my boot is called a "Canwalker Boot" (I had always heard it, never seen it spelled out, so give me a break)...because you 'Can Walk' in it. Hah. Hahaha. Get it? But then I googled it and it's actually 'Cam Walker' with an M, so my genius-ness was shot down.