The Wrong Foot

As promised, I would like to update everyone on the condition of my right foot. Also known as, “the bad foot,” this is the limb that began aching about two weeks ago. In the beginning, I considered it a temporary problem. My original diagnosis was that the problem must be a sudden onset of a strange and formidable gout that could only be cured, perversely, by a strong combination of beef and booze. And so last Friday night I downed two pint glass dark and stormy’s, a drink made by floating Gosling’s dark rum on top of Jamaican ginger beer, and wolfed down a sandwich of fried beef brisket.

That diagnosis proved to be horribly wrong, and the peak of my pain was last weekend. Sunday morning, it was all I could do during brunch to hobble around and sling eggs and hash. I must have looked like some kind of wounded warrior back from a terrific battle with an all beef army, and I got plenty of pity tips. But that brunch also became my turning point. I consulted with experts, namely Jason Lord the sous-chef who took care of my face when I ran head first into a rake at the 4th of July party, and from his sound medical advice it dawned on me that I had probably broken a small bone in that bad foot.

The identification of the problem was the first step, so to speak. Addressing said problem, and understanding the underlying cause, involved me taking off my Rockport work shoe in front of a section crowded with customers and bending it with both hands. While they, the honored Sunday guests, inhaled forkfuls of pork and runny eggs jogged down their jowls, I appraised my bendable work shoe made by Rockport and came to a stunning realization; it was not a work shoe at all. No, this shoe was a loafer. A loafer with no support that I could easily bend with my hands.

Certainly a phalange was broken; a small phalange, yes, but a phalange crucial to my hoof nonetheless. The lack of support not only caused the breakage deep in my appendage; it exasperated it. With a solution to the underlying problem in mind, after work last Sunday my coworkers took me to Vintage, a clog shop in Porter’s Square. I got a discount for working in a restaurant, and paid about $108. for a pair of black Sanitas. By the end of the day, not only was I not limping, I was positively strutting in my clogs. Standing a couple inches taller than usual, I felt like a fabulous drag queen and paraded around with a clippity-clop down the cobblestones of Harvard Square.

Now, roughly a week since I first tried to treat my supposed bout of the freak gout with fried brisket and rum, I wear a pair of bonafide European clogs. My foot still aches when I step on the bad pad, but the support given by the rest of my foot in those heavenly clogs greatly assuages it. I’m going back to work tomorrow with my head held high, or at least two inches higher than before, and with great support. Perhaps I will even break out a purple feather boa and some glamorous make up. The dogs stopped barking.