A Quick Trim Below the Knee

Who would have thunk those games would be so lame? Too bad really, as I had people over to watch them. Or maybe not, as everyone could talk and socialize at will without worrying about talking over a key play.
I also learned from two people present that it is not actually unusual for my ankle to still be swollen after nearly eight weeks. Good news to me, who was beginning to worry I would have an old lady ankle from here on out. It is working pretty well. I played football again yesterday, with a big club on the end of my right leg made of coach's tape, ace bandages and a brace. I could barely get my cleats on over it. It sounds kind of tough and manly until you realize all those layers of Sporting Gear cradle a smoothly shaven ankle.

Yes, I shaved my legs yesterday morning.

Well, not the whole legs, just the ankles. Basically what would be covered by a crew length sock. (Who knew sailors were so picky about hose length?) Like most white men who cross over into the World of Those Not White and Male, I emerged a little bit humbled and freaked. When I first injured the ankle, after I was carried off the field, I propped up the rapidly inflating limb, grabbed a couple rolls of tape and just taped the hell out of it. This made it possible to do things like stand up and pedal my bike with the other foot to the bar for apres' football beers. It wasn't a terriblle thing to do, but I realized later that night I had not thought the thing through to the endgame, which involved removing what amounted to a one-and-a-half square foot bandaid from the end of my hairy leg. Luckily I was already in a fairly agonized state, pain-wise, so it was more a diversion than anything else, but I learned two lessons that day:

I should tape my ankles for football to avoid excruciating injury.

I should shave them first.

This has worked out pretty well, and has opened my eyes quite a bit. I think most men think of the razor as a male sartorial tool, one women borrow from time to time but that we as a sex have really mastered. After all, most of us use it every day. True. But we use it standing straight up with a well lit mirror inches from our face, dragging the razor straight up and down over one point of topographical interest, and thats if we are lucky enough to even have much of a chin. My brief ankle-shaving experience has shed a whole new light on the expertise a woman needs in the skills of both Razor Handling and Contortion to produce even modestly satisfactory results.
All I wanted to do was keep my hair from being ripped out and it was a clinic on clumsy. If I had to be sure not one hair was missed, that my ankles were, to the touch, say it with me..."silky smooth", I would have been crouched on tub edge all morning. And you can't see a damn thing! Every time you bend over to begin, you block the overhead light. It's ridiculous.

Is it as ridiculous as walking around the rest of the week with 1/4 shaven legs? Maybe not. But close.