Bonded by the Boot
February 24, 2017
By Amy Coward
She pulled up beside me as I was getting out of my car, struggling with my orthopedic boot. “I’ve been there!” she yelled from her car window. “I know just how you feel.”
Wearing a boot, it seems, gives you an instant connection to total strangers.
Following recent foot surgery, at first I was in a splint with my foot wrapped bigger than Texas. I really wasn’t able to go anywhere nor did I feel like it. Eventually, though, the wrap was removed and replaced with a boot.
Feeling more protected and desperate to return to normalcy, I returned to work and ventured out more. I went to the movies (and rudely propped my foot up on the chair in front of me), I went to the grocery store. I even went to the gym (and yes, I got a few curious stares). What I didn’t realize was how many instant friends I would have.
“So what happened?” people asked in line at the movies. Or, “How much longer?” The best were the jokes, “you must have kicked ‘em hard!” Mostly, though, people offered encouragement. “Hang in there” (with a knowing wink) or “I just got out of one of those” (looking relieved).
And then there were the people who needed surgery. They would ask what kind I had and offer that they, too, needed something corrected but were worried. “How long will you be in a boot?” they would ask. Or, “how is the pain?” You would think we’d been friends for years.
My boot was clearly a conversation piece.
I can’t say that surgery was a great experience. That would be crazy. There’s pain. There’s inconvenience. LOTS of inconvenience. But there’s also a renewed faith in mankind. People, random strangers, have been so nice asking about me, opening doors for me, helping me into chairs (and out of chairs). It’s been kind of reassuring.
My boot has now been put away and I’m all but healed. But I know that when I see someone in a boot, I’ll ask them how they are and we’ll talk about our experiences. I’ll tell them to “hang in there.”
And we’ll bond.
Amy Coward is a public relations professional in Columbia, SC. When she is not managing the madness of event planning at Palmetto Health Foundation, she is turning her empty nest upside down looking for fun and finding it.
