Views from between the crutches of evil- vol 1

Crutches are evil.

I firmly believe that they do nothing to help your injured foot/leg, but instead just make every other muscle in your body hurt so much that you actually forget about your original pain. Kinda like following up a Britney Spears concert with an Avril Levigne special.

Right now this "Views from between the Crutches of Evil" post series is really just a whinge (whine/complain for those not up with the aussie lingo) about how miserable I am, but I hope that in time it will become a highly insightful but none-the-less amusing accounting of the trials of us Crutch-Cripples in Shanghai.

"coz she's got hiiiiiiiigh hopes, she's got hiiiiiiiigh hopes....." come on, sing with me now...

Last night was the fifth Shanghai Roller Revival- an event we've been looking to for weeks, and of course I had to go and and watch from the sidelines. Yes, there's not much point in going to an 80s-themed roller disco on crutches, even if my costume did rock. I received comments ranging from "Good on you for coming anyway- you rock" (thanks dude), to "What are you even doing here?" (Well, you see tonight is the one night of the month that they let me out of the cripple home and the special bus just dropped me off here- I wanted to see how the real people live.)

Phil won the best costume contest- who can deny a 6'2" man dressed in brown velour hot pants complete with head and wrist sweat bands and knee length sports socks- and I even managed to climb onto the raised dance floor for a swinging sexy crutches boogie to "I wanna dance with somebody". Unfortunately the photos and video of that spectacular moment will be on facebook before I can say "delete".

The highlight of the evening was visiting the ladies room. When 99% of the women visiting a squat toilet are wearing roller skates, well, let me just say that accuracy in aiming is not exactly up to par. Then you get me trying to balance on one leg, the other sticking out in front of me, and my crutches failing to grip onto the urine-slick porcelain surface of the floor. Not pretty. The most amusing moment was when the girl in the stall next to me was complaining loudly to her waiting friend about having to pee in roller skates at the same moment when I hobbled out of the stall, and her friend, on seeing me, told her to "shut the f#@$ up, Melanie".

On another note, I must say that I was always a strong supporter of the (highly ineffective) anti-spitting campaign in Shanghai, but now I am much more so. Having one of your crutches slip out from underneath you because it landed on a big, juicy chuck of spit on the footpath is a highly unpleasant experience.

But it's not all bad. I have had some people actually make room for me in public (an otherwise unheard of even in Shanghai- it's usually very much an every man for himself situation), and some taxi drivers have even gotten out of their seats to open the door for me!

On the bright side, that's one week of my sentence down. Only five more weeks to go.

Excuse me while I go dose up on some more mind-altering pain killers.

Phil's gets his groove on
Photo by Charlie Xia (my crop)