Binny's

I do not have the gout. I liked my doctor in Florida. He usually figured out what was wrong and fixed it, but he was wrong about the gout. What he failed to do was take an X-ray of my ankle. Back in October of last year my ankle started to hurt. I went to the doctor and he immediately said, "It's the gout." I said, "Isn't that an old man's disease?" The doctor looked me in the eye and said, "Yes it is." Okay, so I'm not a kid anymore.

Now that I'm in Chicago I have all new doctors. I'm in one of those HMO's that my doctors in Florida kept telling me never to be part of. They were wrong. I love my HMO. All the doctors seem to know everything about each other and what I'm seeing them for. What is better is that my MD sent me to a Podiatrist with along with an X-ray of my ankle. The diagnosis is, flat feet with a bone spur on my ankle bone that is banging against my foot bone. That and weak ankles. So in celebration of this diagnosis, last Friday I went out into the alley with a armful of empty beer bottles destined for the recycling bin, stepped on a random piece of wood, and twisted my bad ankle. I hit the concrete hard as the beer bottles flew straight up and then straight down, crashing onto the pavement all around me. This was my neighborhood's inaugural demonstration of my ability to use the word 'fuck' in ways they had never heard before. Thank goodness the little children who live next door were not outside playing.

That spill in the alley hurt, but I was not done. Later in the day Mark and I went to Binny's Beverage Depot, to stock up on various "beverages". After checking out, I pushed our cart full of booze out to the car and put it all in the trunk. Then, like a good citizen, I returned the shopping cart to the return corral. I put the cart in with the others and then turned to go back over to our car. However, I misjudged the corral railing and walked right into it, flipping over it like a Russian gymnast and slamming down on the pavement hard. As I lay there in agony, my other ankle now twisted and my elbow shredded, not one person stopped to help me. Nobody even looked at me laying there splayed out next to the cart return, and there were at least six people who walked by me. I don't know if it's the fact that they were all boozed up assholes, or if it was because I was laying there on my back spewing forth a litany of curse words, the word fuck being foremost.