The Gimp Column
Written September 10, 2004

I recently discovered that I don’t make a very willing gimp. Maybe gimp isn’t the politically correct word anymore, I don’t know. Maybe it’s been replaced by something inane and vague like “movement-centric differently abled.” But really, no matter how many ridiculous euphemisms you disguise it with, walking like a decrepit old grandpa when you’re twenty-two is terrible.

Personal injury is one of those dirty elements of life that nobody really considers until they’re dragged unwillingly into the experience. In my case, I was playing basketball and injury ambushed me after a layup like a sucker-punching bitch. It wasn’t even very good basketball (I missed the shot, like a tool) but I paid the price with my ankle. Oh, did I ever.

Over the course of the next few days, my ankle ballooned up and turned tie-dye with bruising. It was almost like portable entertainment – get stoned and watch the pretty colours change. When I put my two feet together, it was like a before-and-after shot that you see in beauty marketing. Before: 300 pounds overweight, acute case of flesh eating disease, disturbingly blue toes. After: boring by comparison.

After weeks of X-rays, crutches, tenser bandages and multiple visits to clinics, I was starting to get sick of my wussy ankle. I stopped seeing it as part of myself and it became more of an enemy.

“How did you like that, motherfucker?” I would ask nastily when I put too much weight on the beleaguered leg and it ached in protest. Technically, I was only paining myself but it almost seemed worth it. In those brief moments when I stopped caring about the ankle’s well-being, I felt that it had to pay the price for holding the rest of me back.

I’ve seen other people react to their ailments with similar malice. With extended or recurring injuries, a weakened body part becomes a source of self-loathing. They become an example of our physical frailty, proof that we aren’t invincible. And it’s damn annoying to have to drag these defects around when they aren’t doing their job properly. After a while, it just wears you down and before you know it, you’re screaming at your own leg and calling it a free-loading Communist.

Now, from what I know, I’m sure that not everybody sees injury this way. I’ll bet that some of you people baby your battered limbs, stroking them fondly at night and whispering things like “Oh muffin-pie, it’s going to be okay.” Maybe you view injuries as yet another sign that there’s a malicious God up there who wants you dead. I once knew an artist-y girl who was constantly falling down and breaking her legs – she told me that she almost looked forward to the next fracture because she would have a brand new cast to paint up.

If you’ve never had a long-term injury or illness, then you are one of the Chosen and I envy you bitterly. I may even try to kill you once I can walk again. But for everyone else, injury is a sourly amusing opportunity to learn a little bit more about yourself. When you’re under long-term duress, it’s surprising what parts of your character will float to the surface. Are you good natured? Partially insane? Patient? A closet sadist?

Gimping yourself just may be the newest path to self-actualization.

Damn I hate my left ankle. That hatred turned into a pretty good column - it was kinda funny and, as Bryn the Opinion editor put it, "it touches on the serious issues of self-hatred." So apparently that's what this column was about. That and political correctness and self awareness and why to not injure yourself because it fucking sucks.