How my Knee Surgery Solved our Defense Weapon's Budget Crisis

While recovering from an ACL (in the knee) surgery a few years ago, I learned that I with a simple brace and crutches, you have the privilege of getting unsolicited stories and advice from all kinds of people! I don't know how I could ever have survived this surgery without all of the wonderful advice from strangers... I was approached numerous times a day with well wishers, nosey people, and best of all... the one up-pers.... You know, the people who always have a story to counter yours? As I reminisce on this wonderful life experience, I would like to share some of the most memorable people from my knee-surgery journey.

My knee is WORST than yours!
I met a man at a children's birthday party-recognizing my brace he tells me that he, too recently had knee surgery...oh, but his is much worse. HIS doctor wheeled him to his car without any brace, crutches, OR pain medication. I was like, "really! wo-ow, you are so brave, tell me more!" *playfully bats eyes*

Grandma's Meth Support Group
My waitress for breakfast one morning asked me about my knee and promptly tells me of her son's accident when he cracked his patella. I'm not sure what happened to him but I'm guessing it involved meth. She relates this story to her grandchildren. Apparently, one day she was cooking for her daughter in law and she asked for a light. Sure, she says, and she goes to the back room to find her doing meth(trust me this was much longer in person). So grandma ever-so couragously scoops up all three grandkids and has been taking care of them ever since. She goes on to tell me that she couldn't support them on her $3.75/hr salary. (more tip, anyone?)

Oh, but the good news? Meth is an epidemic and there are support groups for these grannies who have to take care of meth parent's kids!

Mystery of the Missing Crutch
After a few weeks I only needed to use one crutch. I walked out of Target and some random man stops his vehicle to ask me if I am missing a crutch...ummmm....did you find a single crutch recently...or do you regularly carry around a spare? Why are you asking me this? Like all of a sudden I'm gonna be like, " NO WAY! I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE! NO WONDER MY KNEE HURTS!!! THANKS SO MUCH, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!"

ORTHROSCOPY?!?!
I was walking to my hotel after a very long drive. A man scared me to death by jumping out of nowhere like Spiderman or something and blurts out, "ORTHOROSCOPY?!?!" Thrown off, I blankly stare at him for a moment and mumble, "uh no, ACL reconstruction" and continued walking.

Insistent, he points to his knee dramatically and says, "Have to get orthroscopy in a couple 'a weeks." I look at his knee and it is TOTALLY gross. Seriously. That image is engrained in my memory forever. Luckily, you get my crappy powerpoint drawing of it.

Crappy drawing of a really ugly knee. I assure you it was very disgusting.

An Army of Gymnasts
A woman in the mall stops to ask me what happened and tells me that her daughter, too, had ACL reconstruction. She asked how I did it, and I told her it was during an Army obstacle course. "OH, SAME THING!" she says... "yeah, she was doing a triple super duper flip (some gymnastics thing) and landed wrong." umm, what? Last time I checked, we weren't going to war kicking enemy booty with our super duper flips... or could we?