Old Sports Injury

I developed a deep bond with two of the guys I used to work with when, as we were sitting around talking one day, the conversation turned to old sports injuries, sustained in our glory days. (For all three of us, these were, sadly, all the way back in high school.) It's funny but cute how guys love to talk about this. Their faces just lit up as they were describing torn ligaments, broken limbs, etc.

My chief injury in high school was a dislocated shoulder (from playing tennis), and it has proved to be the gift that keeps on giving. Once you dislocate your shoulder, those ligaments (or tendons or whatever they are) never really heal - they're always kind of loose, so that frequent re-dislocation is possible and even likely. It happened again yesterday. I made some weird motion as I was trying to open a door - a weird motion necessitated by the large box of groceries I was trying to balance in my other hand. Fortunately, it popped right back in again.

The last time it popped out and stayed out, I was with my husband. We were just getting out of the car; I was still in the passenger seat, and I reached behind me to grab something from the back seat, forgetting that this sort of motion is verboten for people without proper ligaments.

Shoulder dislocation is very painful. To give you some sense of the pain, I have a friend who has both dislocated her shoulder and given birth, and of the two, she claims that the dislocation hurt more. I fell out of the car in agony. My husband figured out what was wrong pretty quickly, even though I was in too much pain to say anything. "Throw yourself against something!" he yelled. "Like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon! Throw yourself on the ground!"

The ground was my only option as the nearest wall was too far for me to reach in my injured state. I threw myself down on the ground. This did in fact work, and the shoulder popped back into place.

While I was still on the ground, however, two women (maybe early middle-age, dressed in exercise clothes) walked by. It must have looked bad, me on the ground, my husband standing over me, both of us looking rather distraught. They stopped and stooped down to ask me if everything was okay. "She's fine," my husband said. They ignored him completely, and asked me again if everything was okay. "I'm fine," I said. My husband added, "She just dislocated her shoulder." This time the women glared at him, and then asked me if I was sure that I didn't need any help. I assured them again that everything was fine, and they finally walked away.

My poor husband was so traumatized. Now, any time we have even the slightest argument in a public place, he's sure that he's going to be arrested for spouse abuse.