This sneaker has been the bane of my existence. I’ve only had two foot injuries in my life—one took place last year and the other was last week— and they both took place while wearing the sneaker pictured above. Since I refuse to blame my average basketball skills as the cause for my injuries, I’ve decided that this sneaker is the cause for the gauze.
On Monday, June 6th I dusted off my old pair of “Jordan 6 Rings, Utah Jazz Edition” sneakers and wore it to the gym. I was a bit apprehensive to wear this sneaker to play basketball again since I had to have it removed from my foot by a team of doctors when I last wore it, but I overcame this fear and made my way onto the court. After my third basketball game my sneakers seemed to be against the idea of me playing another game and dirtying it even more, so it revolted. During the second play of the game, I did a jumpshot where I elevated [what seemed like] 75 feet in the air. As I returned back to earth, my sneakers provided no cushion to facilitate a safe landing experience and this resulted in a fiery-hot feeling in my foot. I felt the damage from the inside and I thought, “that’s not supposed to feel that way.” Although my recently injured foot was practically unusable, I continued playing through two more games as the pain intensified. Eventually I hobbled off the court, dragged myself to my car and threw myself in bed at home.
The following morning I got up and expected to walk around normally, but my foot didn’t have the same agenda as the rest of my body. It was swollen as large as a standard-issued volleyball and I couldn’t stand on it without muffling my shrieking scream. I got a ride to the emergency room where they gave me a doctor who poked his thumb into my bruised foot as hard as he could and asked “does this hurt??” Apparently this was his way of inspecting my ankle and I didn’t like it at all. Instead of retaliating in-kind with a poke to the eye, I simply said “yes, doctor. That hurts quite a bit.” To my surprise, he poked the same spot even harder and repeated the same question. If he was trying to instigate a fight with me, it was working but unfortunately I would’ve lost due to my immobility.
I returned home after finding out from Dr. Pain that I suffered from a severe contusion, and I was instructed to keep off my foot for a week. Instead, I spent the remainder of the day practicing how to walk again while enduring the pain and masking my obvious limp. To be honest the limp looked very foolish because I could only walk on my un-injured toes on the right foot, but I couldn’t bear to refrain from walking for a week so I lived with it. When I maneuvered out of the house later in the week, I walked past a group of teenagers and overheard them saying, “look at that dude’s walk.. he’s got ‘swagger.'” All it took was an evil sneaker, a painful-poking doctor, $80 in medical fees and a continuously painful walking experience for me to have a temporarily “swaggeriffic” walk. Was it all worth it? Absolutely*!
* not