Skating Through Life with a Grudge

After childhood fiascoes at the local ice rink, humorist Joel Samberg discovers he was right all the time, after skating through life despite a lack of medical recognition for his aching ankle.

How long should we hold onto the disappointments that plagued us 50 and 60 years ago?

My father always got angry at me whenever I whined unconsolably after being told that we were going on a family outing to the local ice rink. I’m still bitter over it. The thing is, I was unable to keep my right foot straight on the ice. Dad thought I was just lazy or ornery. All I knew was that it hurt.

Welhelm Röntgen discovered the X-ray in 1895. By the time I reached elementary school, his breakthrough was already 70 years old. But because my childhood doctor probably thought I was as lazy and ornery as my dad thought I was, X-rays were never part of the ice-skating equation.

My anguish would began the moment I pulled the skates onto my foot. Then I entered the rink.

“You’re not even trying. Stop being a baby,” Dad would yell.

I thought I was trying. But my ankles just wouldn’t keep my foot straight enough to skate. I would take a deep breath, grab onto the side railing for support, and pull myself along inch by inch. “Let go, let go,” my father would growl, indicating with his head and eye movements that my sister and about 200 other kids were already speeding, twirling, and gliding along on the rink, with smiles to go along with it. Where was my smile?

I didn’t have one.

So I went around like that two or maybe three times, holding on, looking as glum as I felt, dreading each time I would pass my father standing by the opening; I knew he would urge me to let go of the damned railing and get out there and skate. And I’d try, and I’d fall, and my ankle, already sore, would get even worse.

A year ago my right foot started aching even more than it had for the past 60 years. So I went to a specialist who said “This will probably hurt” before using his fingers to press a specific spot on my right foot, to which I responded, “Holy crap, you’re right, it hurts.” He sent me to radiology. The X-ray showed that the tendon in my right foot, although physically present, might as well not be because it is completely ineffectual. It hardly works at all. The doctor said it had probably been that way since birth.

Thank you, Mr. Röntgen.

My options, I was told, were rigorous daily exercises designed specifically for the problem, or surgery. Either or both might work – or do no good at all. There was a chance, he said, that with exercise and a little luck the tendon could regenerate and start doing what it’s supposed to do.

But if the tendon does regenerate, my wife may want me to go ice skating with her and our grandchildren, and I’m not sure if I want to. I might find out I’m really good at it. That would be awful.

Joel Samberg’s work has appeared in Pittsburgh Magazine, Hartford Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, Moment Magazine and many others. He also writes the popular monthly “Off Ramp” column for Connecticut Magazine, for which he recently won first place in the humor column category from the Connecticut division of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of eight published books. Recently Joel founded a community theater and performing arts group in Avon, Connecticut, called Playhouse 44.