This is kind of a turnaround on the “Where’s the other wheel?” responses.
Since my fall induced foot pain, I’ve noticed a huge variety of responses when I tell people just HOW I hurt my foot. They vary from “WOW - you can ride a unicycle - that’s AMAZING” (followed by me pointing to my sore foot and saying “Obviously I need more practice” or something like that) through the obvious “What’s a unicycle” (followed by a brief explanation and a similar response to the first option), to the one guy who disintegrated into hysterical laughter. Tears were running down his face and I was afraid he was going to hurt himself. It’s just lucky he was sitting down at the time or he probably would have fallen over and rolled around on the floor clutching his sides and laughing.
So - what’s the best response you’ve received to a unicycling induced injury?
From my doctors, who I see frequently for twists, sprains, mangled joints, bruises, cut veins, 4cm deep puncture wounds, etc. My medical file has an x-ray of almost every bone in my body.
When they enter the examination room, which usually also contains my Coker because I rode it there:
“So, Greg, what did you fall off of and what will we be x-raying today?”
I had a similar experience when I was receiving a life insurance physical. When I told the nurse a large bruise on my arm was from unicycling she said, “Oh, that’s you.” She lived in the same neighborhood, a mono-monocycle neighborhood, and had seen me riding.
The medical forms did appropriately note that I was a unicyclist, and I was covered at the quoted cost, so I guess we’re not on the underwriter’s list of dodgy activities (yet).
Usually when someone asks how I broke my leg, I start out by saying that I was going down a flight of stairs, two at a time,…during which their face just looks normal as they are listening to me. But then when I continue on by adding “on a unicycle” this cool thing happens to their face, and its the same every time, eyes widen, jaw drops and eyebrows shoot upwards. Next comes, “On a WHAT ?!”
Almost always the same…sigh… it was kind of a surprising reaction to observe for the first few months but now its about as predictable as ‘where’s your other wheel’…LOL
once this old lady was walking across a road towards us. and there was these posts that i was rolling hoppping up to then proceeded to hop across the others.
so this lady walks past and says “get off that thing around so many people, you could knock someone over” then she waited in front of the posts in my run up space for me to get off “well… are you going to do as i say?”
i replied with a “ahhh no”
and then she moved on and turned and said “you know… youre not even that coordintated on that thing” (as i hopped across the posts)
i said “yeah youre probably right, but who are you to say?”
and then she walked back and said “i hope you fall off and crack your skull and die. the world will be a better place without people like you”
Yeah, I know. I’m wondering if I should just quit while I’m ahead. If I can get myself a 4-6 week layoff while LEARNING TO RIDE, what will I do to myself when I start to practice freemounting and idling and stuff like that?
Uh, sorry, I did not want to scare you. I’m sure your injury was just bad luck.
What I wanted to say was that it seems to me that the people with a lot of practice tend to hurt themselves more because they take more risks (like riding down stairs or jumping of a 14 footer).
The most bizarre response I got hobbling around in my cast was a hearty "Good for you!” I took that as a response to my riding a unicycle, not for the injury. I also got a lot of people who just didn’t believe me. "Oh come on, you can make up a better story than that,” someone said. Another one I got was, "I guess you won’t do that again.” referring to unicycling. How wrong they were. The emergency room Doc who set the broken bone exclaimed, "Ouch! That must hurt!” as he was looking at the X-ray. That was an understatement.
I got lots of stories from people about how they broke bones themselves. A surprising number broke arms and legs playing football or basketball.