I’ve worn Converse shoes off and on since about second grade and I have always found them to be comfortable and unique. I even wore my Converse shoes during basketball tryouts in seventh grade. Wearing Chuck Taylor shoes during the day and wearing them during athletics are two completely different scenarios but I am not going to gripe about how painful it is to rebound in Chuck’s. Instead, I’m going to tell you about how I broke my hand wearing my classic blue Chuck Taylor’s.
I wasn’t the best basketball player. Just the year before, in sixth grade, I scored only six points the whole season. However, on defense I was an unstoppable force. I could steal the ball quicker than Satan steals an unlucky soul. I would fly across the court with disregard for life or limb. In fact, I was so great at defense that I was willing to break my hand for a team that I was trying out for.
The day the bones in my hand choose to leave it’s God given position: I was on a 3-on-3-scrimmage team. I must say I was on my game this day. Sure I wasn’t scoring points but that just wasn’t my style. I was working the defensive skills putting my hands in the face of my opponents, blocking shots and passes left and right. You could hear the sound of my Converse soles rubbing on the ground as I left smudge marks on the court. Then all of the sudden my teammate missed a shot and as I dove for the ball saving the shot from the damnation of being turned over: my left hand was smashed under the weight of my chest as I fell to the floor.
A shocking pain traveled up my arm as I stood to my feet. When I looked at my hand I knew right away… something’s not right. My pinky finger was a good inch off the side of my hand, my ring and middle fingers had nearly changed positions and all three of these knuckles formed one giant knuckle on my middle finger. My Chuck Taylor’s and I floated over to my coach and I said, “Coach, I think I broke my hand.” He told me I just dislocated it but I thought it would be wise to go to the hospital.
I waited nearly an hour for my mom to come pick me up from the tryouts and take me to the hospital. It seemed like days before the hospital staff called me to the back. My hand wasn’t very painful until I looked down and reminded myself; that should probably hurt. It felt like I had no hand at the end of my arm, just space. The nurses took an X-ray of my mangled hand and I waited for a doctor to come in the room to tell me the news.
As Doogie Howser, M.D walked in the room he held the X-ray in his hand and as he continued to look at the film he said, “Well I don’t see any breaks,” then he glanced at my malformed hand and said, “Let me check the X-ray again.” I immediately felt like I was receiving topnotch care. The young doctor walked back in the room after only a minute and said, “Yeah there are numerous breaks in your hand.” I said, “you think” and felt hopeful about my abilities to someday become a doctor.
A specialist was called to the hospital to fix my deformed hand. When the new doctor walked in he seemed to know what he was doing. He was wearing regular clothes, not the normal scrubs with a lab coat. The new smart doctor said he was at a baseball game when he was paged to come to the hospital. He didn’t seem to mind being called away from the game… until he put my hand back in place; it was as if he was taking out some rage on my poor hand. No one told me that he was going to do the repositioning of my fingers right there in the room with no numbing or laughing gas. It felt like he was getting me back for missing his baseball game.
The doctor gently grabbed my hand and quickly turned my fingers straight and bent it forward. There was no warning, no breath held, no nothing; I just screamed. Then he wrapped my hand with a bandage and splint and said, “You’re going to want to take a lot of ibuprofen.” I left the hospital with my hand throbbing in pain and I felt like I may have wanted to leave it messed up with the unbearable pain I was feeling having it fixed.
I didn’t make the team season and I officially retired from basketball from that day forward. The scuffmarks my Converse shoes left on the court that day is proof of my dedication to the team. Of course, my messed up middle finger is proof that I made a doctor miss a baseball game.
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