Possible Talocalcaneonavicular Subluxation, He Said Knowingly

It took a full week at my new job for something to go horribly wrong. Not too shabby. I had a little over 300 students at my previous school. I taught about 22 classes, six days a week. I usually had three classes on weekdays except Wednesday, four classes on Wednesdays and the rest were on Saturdays. The schedule changed regularly since Boss Lady had to juggle 300 students amongst two teachers. There was one foreign teacher, me, and one Chinese teacher, her. Another Chinese teacher was brought in when I was on vacation and on the very rare occasion that Boss Lady could not teach a class. Usually for administrative reasons. Most of the students came to the school twice a week. One day they would be in my class learning English and the other day they would be in her class learning the wacky Chinese phonetic system that teaches students how to mispronounce vowels and hard consonants. Someone somewhere decided that this phonetic system was the only way Chinese people could learn to recognize the English alphabet and learn how to pronounce anything. It is also the reason they add syllables to short words like deska, baga and booka and cannot tell any vowels apart.

Boss Lady’s husband is a math teacher and he taught math classes. That has nothing to do with anything I did there so I see no reason to mention it. But we had an interesting conversation about how the Chinese write out math equations when the number 2 (二) in Chinese looks like the equals sign, 1 (一) looks like minus and 10 (十) looks like plus. 十 + 二 - 一 = 十 一.

I currently have about 25 students in four classes at my new school. I am the only foreigner and there are three Chinese teachers, including the new Boss Lady, whom I have to find a different name for since she is not The Boss Lady. At my old school I had students anywhere from 6 years old to adults. At my new school I have a class that is probably illegal for me to teach since foreigners cannot legally teach anyone under the age of 6, and none of my students are anywhere near high school age. I have one adult class. They are the Chinese teachers. This is moderately interesting to me since my students in this class are the people who teach my classes on the days I am teaching other classes. They teach the wacky KK phonetics, sing the songs and play the games. I teach the children and their teachers English.

Boss Lady at the old school spoke English much good. One of the teachers at the new school went to college in Australia. Her English is not horrible. But she misspells everything. Like doovalacky. Another teacher is completely new to teaching and to English, apparently. Her English is dreadful, but she is probably my most enthusiastic student. New Boss Lady is not too difficult to understand, but she floods her sentences with “how to say” to the point of distraction. I had a professor in college who said “if you will” so much that I quickly lost track of whatever he was trying to tell us. I could never hear the forest for the trees, if you will.

I also have a class at the local junior high school. When I was at my old school I was asked to teach classes at that local junior high. I turned it down because I would have taught from 8am to 9pm six days a week with only the traditional lunch break. The money would have been nice, but I would have burned out quickly and there would have been almost no time for Pi Chi once I met her. And junior high students are the worst. I have had many perfectly acceptable elementary students who turned into raging assholes as soon as they entered junior high.

When New Boss Lady asked me if I wanted to teach a class at the new local junior high school I quoted an absurd fee. The school accepted. Unfortunately, I only have one class there.

Last Friday I took the five minute walk from the junior high school to my school. Walking the streets around here is almost as dangerous as driving. Pedestrians never have the right of way. A mother pushing her child in a stroller does not have the right of way. Chinese drivers will run over babies if it means avoiding the brake pedal. When I learned to drive I was told that the brake is the most important part of the car. To the Chinese the brake is a shameful nuisance. Using the brakes brings dishonor to your family.

Fortunately for anyone lucky enough to read this, I have experience walking amongst atrocious drivers. I know that none of them can see me, despite the fact that most of them are staring at me with their mouths agape when they probably should be watching the car they are about to hit. My great skill and natural grace took me through innumerable obstacles and brought me safely to my school. And then I broke my ankle.

Like every private business in this country the school is really just someone’s house. The ground floor is the lobby and reception area. The classrooms are upstairs. Since this is a new school in an old house there are usually random tradespeople installing something or fixing something that someone else has recently installed. Chinese people remove their shoes when they enter a house. Local tradespeople and manual laborers remove their shoes when they come in to do whatever they are doing. I think the reasoning is that it is better to traipse your dirty feet across the floor than your dirty shoes. I have lived here for years. I know all about this.

Yet when I walked down the stairs I did not bother to notice the slippers placed on the bottom step. When I stepped on one and it slid out from under me my foot went down one way and my body went the other. It hurt like a mother fucker. In fact, that was the new vocabulary lesson I taught the student who happened to be standing nearby. She is the sweetest little girl who has no business being anywhere near the likes of me. Fortunately for her parents, she is also the only person at the school who is not one of my students. Since there is no appropriate class to put her in she has a private class with one of the Chinese teachers. The assumption is that when the school gets bigger there will be somewhere to put her.

Cara told the adults that the tall foreigner made fall down and I was soon the belle of the ball. Old Boss Lady would have immediately seen her profits decrease. Not because of hospital bills. Medical treatment costs almost nothing around here. But if the foreigner is injured he cannot teach classes, and if he does not teach any classes the parents are not happy. Parents are the people who pay the bills. New Boss Lady seemed generally concerned for my wellbeing. She graciously suggested that I sit out the first half of my class. I suggested that my ankle could conceivably be broken. This horrified her. Perhaps because an injured foreigner at a new school is unlucky. Perhaps from genuine compassion. Probably a little of both.

The locals suggested I go to the local hospital. But it is more of a clinic than a hospital and I do not have the greatest fondness for local clinics. So I tried to call Pi Chi. She works at a real hospital. She is a nurse. She does not give a rat’s ass about the school’s profits. But a funny little quirk Pi Chi has is that she never answers the phone when I call her. She will answer when her relatives call. She will answer when friends and acquaintances call. I have seen her literally drop everything and run to the phone when she has no idea who is calling. But she will never answer the phone when I call. I try not to take it personally. It is probably unlucky.

I tried to call Pi Chi at all of her phone numbers. She has three or four phone numbers at two or three phones. None of which she answers when I call. I gave one of the phone numbers to New Boss Lady and she called. Pi Chi answered the phone immediately.

Pi Chi agreed that going to her hospital was a better idea than going to the local clinic. But Pi Chi could not come and get me since I had her car. She suggested I take an ambulance, but my experience with ambulances has always been detrimental to my investment portfolio. Eventually I decided I would simply drive myself there. Her car is an automatic and it was my left ankle that was on the fritz. What could possibly go wrong.

Getting to the car was a great adventure. I quickly found that walking on the ankle was not going to happen unless I took a crash course in one of those zen yoga techniques that lets you set yourself on fire and feel only butterfly kisses. New Boss Lady offered to help me to the car, but an under five foot tall 90 pound Chinese woman is not the best crutch. Thanks to my Meigouren ingenuity I devised an intricate system of moving from one chair to another until I was out the door. I then used an umbrella as a crutch. The umbrella gallantly sacrificed its life so that I might be temporarily mobile.

At Pi Chi’s hospital the doctor wanted to play with my ankle. I wanted x-rays. He tried to move my foot around before I told him that if he was looking forward to the full use of his face any time in the future he would cease and desist immediately. I suggested x-rays. He wanted to drive a needle into my ankle and suck out fluids. I wanted x-rays. Eventually the doctor had an idea. “Why don’t we take some x-rays”, he said. Brilliant.

I have been radiated before. I know that it takes time and in some crowded hospitals in non-emergent situations it can take days. Pi Chi’s hospital is what one might call modern. They do not actually use film x-rays that have to be developed. They shoot you with the radiation and the picture shows up on their screen immediately. The digital image can be sent to any doctor at the click of a mouse. I have no idea why American hospitals cannot utilize such technology. They would say it is too expensive. The digital x-ray at Pi Chi’s hospital cost me ten US dollars. It was only so expensive because I do not yet have health insurance.

The doctor was looking at my x-ray before I was back in his office. He said nothing was broken as far as he could tell. He did not seem too confident. He explained that there are some tiny bones in the ankle that one could easily break without feeling anything. I explained that I felt something. I could not walk without expanding on George Carlin’s seven words.

The good news about universal health care is that it is dirt cheap. The bad news is that hospitals give you nothing. I had to get my own ankle brace apparatus. The good news is that in Pi Chi’s hospital there are two hospital supply stores in the basement. The bad news is that neither had the brace that the doctor recommended. The good news is that Pi Chi knows the doctor personally and could call him to see if what was available was acceptable. The bad news is that it was not. The good news is that I already had a good cane from our trip to Paris. The bad news is that I had to get a cane when I was in Paris. The good news is that I went to Paris. At this point I have no idea if my glass is half empty or half full.

If you are a foreigner in this country people will stare at you. Everywhere. In a sense it is liberating. If I dye my hair purple and wear a suit of armor I will be stared at as much as if I wear the ‘80s fashion and hair that meets current social conformity. Walking with a cane around here will elicit stares. As will being a foreigner. But one cannot expect any consideration. The handicapped never have the right of way. When I was in Paris on a cane people offered me their seats on the metro. When we arrived home from that trip absolutely no one showed any consideration whatsoever. A few people almost knocked me down with their typical selfish behavior. Vive la différence.

Foreigners around here routinely go to work in sandals and slacker apparel. It has nothing to do with being a slacker foreigner. That is how the locals dress for work as well. I have always refused to go to work shoeless. I do not wear a suit. Far from it, but I have my own dress code. I did not wear t-shirts until I came to my new school and even now I do not wear shirts with slogans or any kind of writing. My “I am born to do it. It has to think only about the thing. Even if everthing is lost, the futures still remain. There are only three method, correct method wrong method and my method I must not run away from the weaknes. Are you fighting? It is nesessary to fight to the lost minute at time, and there is a thing to die, too. Why is not now if it fight?” shirt has never been in a classroom. But now I am going to work in sandals. I simply cannot put on shoes and socks. I am also the kind of teacher who stands in class. I have seen a few teachers who are a little more casual about their teaching methods, but I do not think the teacher should be sitting in a corner and paying more attention to his cell phone than his class. But now I sit in class. Even with a cane and approved brace I cannot stand for any length of time without sweating like a dolphin.

In my country I would be able to sue the school. I would at least get enough to pay for medical bills. Around here that is simply not an option. And there are no medical bills. Everything was paid in full before I left the hospital. In my country I could take months off for physical and psychological recovery. Here I got three days off, and only because it all happened on a Friday and the following Monday was a national holiday.

Now I always look down when I take the stairs.