One Small Step for Man, One Broken Foot That Fucked Up My Dream Vacation
Nobody knows the first-world troubles I've seen.
Somewhere in a dusty corner of West Africa, a young widow watches the flies, stealing the last vestiges of moisture from her emaciated baby’s eyes, powerless, as he slips away, soon to join his siblings in the afterworld.
Sure, that's tragic, but let me tell you about a real tragedy—my ruined dream vacation.
That, my friends is what’s known as a litmus test.
For those of you who instinctively knew—tongue planted firmly in cheek—that I’m setting the context and that, no matter how 'woe is me' this story sounds, I’m well aware it’s a first-world problem, please continue reading.
But for those who thought I was being literal, please fuck right off.
Editor’s Note: Seeing as I’ve already used “fuck” twice (now three times), I shall refrain from doing so for the rest of this missive.
There wasn’t going to be an ‘Anecdote’ this week because I was supposed to be enjoying the wonders of Alberta, Canada—specifically Calgary, and more specifically, Banff—a dream vacation I’d been planning, stressing over, and paying for over the past six months.
Yet less than 32 hours into our trip it was effectively over. Allow me to explain.
At the thirty-one hour mark, I was sitting in the bar of our hotel, enjoying a decent local brew, and performatively writing in my journal as I often do when hoping that someone will stop and ask, “Are you a writer?” to which I respond, with a sheepish smile, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am a writer.”
Recapping the events so far, I wrote, “I feel like we’ve already fit a full trip into just the first 24-hours.”
Granted, a rough and unpoetic line, but objectively true.
And then I wrote a line that, even as someone aggressively anti-superstitious and unbelieving in fate, I thought twice about writing: 'It’s hard to imagine it can get better.'
And thus, the irony gods, ever the attentive readers and loathe to miss an opportunity to smite the unwary, took note, and began to sharpen their instruments of retribution, which were soon put to use.
It was a bright, beautiful afternoon and we decided to walk to dinner. My daughter and son took the lead, I followed, and bringing up the rear was my wife, reveling in the 360-degree beauty all around us.
Then, in an instant, it all went bad, as a Canadian bull moose charged out of the bush and slammed into my wife, knocking her to the ground, in the process, breaking her foot.
Or at least that’s the story I’m telling people, because the truth is as inexplicable as it is mundane.
Hearing what I can only describe as a pained yelp, I turned back to see my wife on the ground, grasping her foot.
Best I can determine, she misjudged the curb, didn’t see the curb, or possibly was trying to take a photo when the curb reared its ugly head, in any case, it was just a curb. Not a giant curb. Not a disguised curb. Not an uneven curb. Just an everyday, vanilla, missionary position curb.
And, for Christ’s sake, she was stepping down off the curb, not up onto it.
Editor’s Second Note: This is the part of the story where I tell you, lest you think me a dick, that I am totally empathetic and compassionate to my wife and what she’s gone (going) through—it’s just that this story is about me, dammit!
It was then that a passerby—a rather heavyset man wearing a too-tight tank top and cut-off jean shorts—rushed over and knelt beside my wife.
“I saw you fall,” he said, “do you mind if I take a look at your foot?”
My wife, always eager to please and reluctant to say “no,” lest she hurt someone’s feelings, of course said, "yes."
The man poked and prodded her foot, then ran his hands around her ankle and halfway up her calf.
“Well, the good news is it’s not broken,” and with that, he disappeared back into the crowd of tourists from whence he came.
It later occurred to me that he neither represented himself as a doctor nor a nurse. For all I know, he could have just been one of those freaks who likes to fondle ladies’ feet. Suffice to say, X-rays from the ER proved Mr. Foot Fetish wrong as my wife had in fact incurred an avulsion fracture of the lateral malleolus, also known as a jacked-up foot.
And thus endeth our vacation.
It was a tough decision—one we made as a family—based on various factors: physical, financial, practical, and emotional. The list goes on. But I think we made the right call.
Still, I can’t lie, ending our trip before it started sucked major ass, but I also really meant it when I wrote that we fit a whole vacation in the first day. So, given the limited amount of time we were in Banff, I’d say we used it to the fullest.
And with that, here are a few random thoughts from my truncated trip.
Banff is off the charts beautiful.
In an episode of The Simpsons where everyone’s favorite yellow family travels to Australia, there’s a scene in which Homer, always the stupid and ugly American, goes into an outback bar and rather cockily says, “Give me one of those giant beers I’ve heard so much about.”
After the bartender produces a cartoonishly large can of Foster’s, Homer slinks down in his chair and reluctantly admits, “Well, it’s pretty big, I guess.”
That’s Banff in a nutshell.
People will tell you how amazingly beautiful it is, so much so you think to yourself, can it really be that beautiful?
The answer is, "Yes, it can, and yes, it is."
Here’s just a small sample.
I think I actually like people now.
If I had to describe my psychological makeup in candy-like terms, I would be an everlasting gobstopper; a core of kindness and curiosity about others, layered with successive coatings of insecurity-driven defenses that manifest as aloofness, judgment, and a general inclination to limit my interactions with people as much as possible.
A late(r) in life maturing has been wearing down those outer layers, and this trip finally exposed the core.
The age demo in Banff resembles a barbell, with large concentrations at each end of the spectrum. On one end you’ve got the 20-something’s, predominantly ex-pats from various corners of the former Commonwealth, manning the service industry and tourist attractions. At the other end, you'll find the 65+ crowd, who make up the bulk of that tourist population.
To my amazement, I found myself repeatedly—and spontaneously—engaging with and talking to both these groups. And most shockingly, I actually enjoyed it.
Control is an illusion—and processing a skill.
Thinking back on how precious I was in the run-up to this trip makes me laugh. I obsessed over every detail, from meticulously planning each day's itinerary, to curating a list of the best spots to visit, and even finding the best bug spray to carry. All of which, in retrospect, was an obvious attempt to assert control and manifest the perfect vacation for my family and me.
And as we’ve seen, life has a way of reminding us that control is just an illusion.
But, I’ve also got to give myself credit for how I handled things after the situation became a fait accompli.
Once we decided to go to Banff, all my family had to do was show up.
For me, though, it was just the beginning of all the planning and obsessing. And when everything went south, though, as I alluded to in the opening of this story, nobody died, to me, it did feel like a kind of death.
To their credit, my wife and kids immediately tried to put a brave face on and spin the events in the best possible way. But I couldn’t go there, at least not right away.
A previous version of Brian would have spun out, obsessing over how “unfair” it was that our vacation was cut short. But in my current version, which I roughly estimate as Brian v7.2, I took a different tack.
I acknowledged how much this sucked and what a disappointment it was, then I went for an extended walk in the forest, reminding myself of the single most important practice in Stoic philosophy: differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t, what we have influence over and what we do not.
There’s no magic here. The goal is simply to shorten the half-life of your emotions and the impact they carry. And I think I did that pretty well.
Fuck yeah, I’m great!
Editor’s Third Note: Regarding not using “fuck” again, I lied.
It’s different when it’s your ox being gored.
I’d like to think that I’m empathetic to and an ally of the disabled (by the way, that is the correct term, I looked it up), but after pushing my wife around in a wheelchair for a day and a half, I now have a completely different perspective on this topic.
The first thing you realize is how drastically your world shrinks. Suddenly, the list of accessible attractions, restaurants, and even basic routes through the city becomes severely limited. What was once a world of endless possibilities narrows down to a handful of wheelchair-friendly options, and even the ADA compliant places come with their own set of challenges.
Then there’s the public.
Yes, less than 500 words ago I went on a self-congratulatory riff about people and how I now love them—blah, blah, blah.
But here’s the deal.
Granted, we did encounter some people who were quick to move to the side or hold open a door, but more often than not we found that people just stared at us and acted like it was a massive inconvenience to change their gait and let us through.
I can only imagine what it must be like to have this as a permanent part of your life.
The Canadian health care system is weird.
It’s true, if you’re a Canadian citizen, the government provides free, though delayed, health care—the average wait for knee surgery in The Great White North being about six months.
For non-citizens, not so much.
It cost a cool $1100 just to be admitted to the hospital, and the doctor’s services were billed separately. And I mean that literally.
After waiting in an empty ER for over six hours—I later learned the delay was because they needed to phone the on-call attending at home, and he wasn’t picking up—we received a cursory five-minute exam, after which Dr. I-Could-Give-A-Shit returned with a wireless POS system to run our credit card for his stellar services ($460!).
Call me a snob, but I'd rather not have my ER physician—or any doctor, for that matter—swipe my credit card as if I'm settling up for a plate of mozzarella sticks at Applebee's.
I’d much prefer to pay insurance premiums, which allow me to believe that my doctors live high up on Mt. Hippocrates, their pay delivered seamlessly by angels, so as not to disturb their work on making me immortal.
USA…USA…USA…USA….
I’ve got so many other thoughts, including why it’s important to cultivate serendipity, be grateful for what you have, and why kids are so awesome. But don’t worry, as Norah Ephron once said, “everything is copy,” and these themes will likely appear in future episodes of ‘The Anecdote.’
And on that note, join me again next week when I regale you with the story of how I once lost a knife fight in Paris.
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Hope your wife is on the mend. That bastard moose has been ruining vacations for people all summer, lol ….We’re sorry! Glad you enjoyed one of the many jewels of our country, and will come back soon. I won’t tell you about the $15K it cost me for two hours at the ER in Florida one time, but suffice it to say that I think the medical systems in both countries can do better.
Before i owned a car
In the ‘70s, we hitchhiked to CA from Ohio to hike and camp in Yosemite. Walking the trail along the Merced river, photo-dawdling well behind my friends, I slipped on a slimy rock crossing a stream. More concerned about the way my camera hit the water than myself, it was a few seconds before I realized the loud snap I heard came from my knee that was now folded under me.
In those days the valley was pretty crowded but the hiking trails were still quiet enough to hear the rustle of the trees and the easy flow of the river a few yards away. But not quiet enough for my friends to hear my yelp of pain and calls for help.
I was carrying a camping vacation worth of backpack, sleeping bag and my photo gear and now I couldn’t put much weight on the leg that turned out to have a torn ligament.
There were 4 miles left of downhill hiking to reach our campsite.
The good news showed up a few minutes later as a long haired fellow with a light pack stopped, shouldered all my stuff, found me a sturdy wood stick to lean on and reversed his course to accompany me all the way to the campsite. Some people will restore your faith and that guy walked off needing only my gratitude.
That was just part of an unforgettable 3 week Yosemite experience, and certainly the most inspiring. I hope Mrs. Lund heals fast and well!