Excerpt from the Fall Guy

The Twenty-Foot Rule

On a clear, smog-free day (rare in Los Angeles at that time), my wife and I rented bikes in Santa Monica and rolled south on the Marvin Braude Bike Trail adjacent to the beach. This beautiful trail runs twenty-two miles from Will Rogers State Beach in the north down to Torrance.

On our way back, I saw a short, gentle path leading to a knoll, which turned out to be a car park. I wanted to admire the normally invisible San Gabriel, Santa Monica, and Verdugo Mountains that encircle LA. As I biked slowly through the car park, my gaze fixed on the horizon, I didn’t see a speed bump. I dropped to the pavement in slow motion, landed directly on my right knee, and heard a crack.

I immediately realized this was not a good sign. We were right near Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, and before long I learned that I had fractured my right patella (kneecap) directly across the middle. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt much, and I could walk because the patella does not bear any body weight.

It so happens I had scheduled surgery for a patient later that day. I reached my orthopedic surgeon, Andy Schwartz, and he was available to treat my injury at that very time. I called the operating room and switched myself out for the already scheduled patient, made myself NPO (nothing to eat or drink), and Susie and I drove to the hospital.

Andy planned simply to remove my patella, since I didn’t need it to walk. I rejected that treatment vehemently. In high school, when I was (not for long) on the junior basketball team despite my towering five feet, eight inch height, one of the school’s coeds called me Legs Gradman because of my shapely gams. I persuaded Andy not to remove the patella but rather to bolt the sundered bone segments, which he obligingly did. I am reminded of that wise decision every time I pass through a full-body scanner at the airport.

On our way home from the hospital Susie came up with an excellent suggestion, which I decided immediately to incorporate as a rule, namely that you should repeatedly look twenty feet ahead to determine if there are any lurking hazards before you. You should also pay special attention when you step on to or down from curbs.

This was my introduction to the twenty-foot rule. It was my first major fall, but I would soon ramp up that number.

On another fine Los Angeles day, my wife and I started on a neighborhood walk. Only steps from our home, I stumbled on a sidewalk edge pushed up less than half an inch. OK, so it was years after the day I fell off my bike and I had promised to follow Susie’s twenty-foot rule, but I confess I wasn’t following it as closely as I should. To be honest, I wasn’t following it at all. I thought I only scraped the front of my right leg and X-rays showed no fracture. The ER doctor diagnosed a contusion, which is a fancy word for a bruise. Either way, I suffered excruciating pain for about six weeks…

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