I broke a leg once. Literally. It snapped, like breadstick on tuna. I was in high school and we were playing this 5-a-side match with my friends after school.
I’m chasing the ball by the side of the pitch and my ankle bends in this odd unnatural way. Then I’m moving like a crab and tell my friends, I think I broke something.
They keep playing and say that no, I didn’t break anything. They say, “When you break a bone you feel sick and throw up everywhere.” I was just fine, they said.
A few minutes later there’s a watermelon hanging down my shin. I friend drives me home and when my mum sees me, she curses and damns every football players in history. I mean, I couldn’t blame her. Two years before I twisted my knee and broke a few ligaments. It took two surgeries and months of physiotherapy to walk again without crouches.
Looking at my swollen ankle my mum is shouting so loud that every neighbour knows I broke something. Again. Then she puts her coat on and drives me to the hospital.
It turned out my ankle had snapped in two. They had to drill a piece of metal in my leg to help with the correct calcification of the bones.
That drove metal detectors at the airport crazy. They’d check and tap my legs two, three times before they’d let me go to the gates.