Did the Ripstick break my leg or what it the ground?

I was at the park with my kids and saw some young hipster cruising around on a 2 wheeled skateboard. It looked fun, and dangerous and much like something that would possibly snap an ankle. Of course, having been plagued by ankle injuries all my life I had to find a new way to hurt myself and this looked like the perfect device for injury and pain.

I loaded the kids into my tiny little Japanese 4 banger and headed over to the local Kiddie Crack House better known as Toys R Us. There I found something called a Ripstick. I promptly dropped $99.99 on the counter after giving my home phone number to the checker and took everyone home to watch the “how-to” video. It looked pretty easy but I knew it looked much easier than it actually would be to get on top and stay on top. After 4 or 5 attempts I was able to get going about 10 or 15 feet and soon I was cruising around the tennis court. The kids didn’t want to try it, they stuck to the 4 wheels of a skateboard that day.

It didn’t take long and they were rockin’ the Ripstick better than dad…of course I had a broken leg so that helped.

My 8 year old son on the leg snapper

I took it to my office where I rode it on the finished concrete floor in the warehouse. Finished concrete is very slick, turn too tight and BAM! My hands got some pretty major bruises and my knees took some abuse as well.

My girlfriend at the time took a liking to the Ripstick and we went out one night to the local tennis court to ride together. I had been ripping it up (not really but it sounds good) for a couple of hours and decided it was time to dismount, and dismount I did. I went to step off of the thing and the board went left while my body stayed stationary, I lost my balance and all of my weight came down on my left foot. I heard crunching and I felt it too.

I had sprained (and probably broken from time to time) both ankles over and over again, I’m talking countless times, through the years playing basketball. I know a sprain before I even hit the ground. I can tell the moment I hit the ground the severity of the sprain, if I’m going to be able to finish the game, have to sit out a few or if I’m off for a couple of months. Well, this time I hit the ground, grabbed my foot, looked up at my girlfriend and said, “I broke my foot”.

She laughed and said, “Let’s go”.

I said, “I broke my foot, take me to the ER” and let go of it just to show her. It flopped to the side and she believed me.

It’s funny how different a sprain feels from a break. Sprains are extremely painful, the pain just lingers and lingers until you’re reduced to a quivering ball of sobbing jelly. The break was more interesting. It just snapped (much worse than I thought after we saw the xrays) and didn’t really hurt at all. I just kind of thought, “Oh shit, how long is this going to take to heal?.

I crawled about 100 yards to the car and pulled my gimpy ass up into the passenger seat and we went to the hospital. They took me in for xrays and then I waited for the results. The doctor walked in the room and looked at me, looked at my girlfriend, looked around the room, then looked at me again. He said, “Are you Vaughn?”.

I told him that was me and he asked, “How old are you?”.

I thought he was referring to the fact that I was riding a skateboard when he was actually referring to the fact that my xray looked like the ankle of a 65 year old man all riddled with arthritis and bone spurs. When he told me that I said, “You should xray my right ankle. This is my good one.”

He told me it was time for surgery and we scheduled a return trip for the next morning and they gave me some kind of shot in the ass that made all my furniture very comfy then slapped a big ugly boot on my leg to hold it steady for the night.

I went into surgery, they fixed me all up with a titanium plate and 9 screws and 25 staples to hold it closed. I sat in the hospital overnight with a morphine drip and all kinds of monitors hooked to my body as though I was in danger of slipping into cardiac arrest at any moment, drank a lot of ice water and slipped in and out of drug induced sleep.

The recovery sucked, crutches suck, bathing sucked, I couldn’t play with my kids, barely get down the hall to take a wazzer or nuke a burrito and I missed quite a bit of work. After about 4 weeks I was able to get around pretty well and at the 8 week mark the doctor told me I could sleep with the boot off. Being who I am I took that as the green light to dump the boot so I started walking without it.

I was warned by folks that it wasn’t a good idea but today I’m doing fine. I still have pain and a massive scar.