Since I’ve come here, I’ve had to defend my flip flop wear on more than one occasion. Granted, I had to do that all the time in New York, especially during the winter months. But there are enough people on Long Island who forego the comforts of closed-toed shoes to make me look relatively normal or, at the very worst, like a rebellious bohemian (thanks, Dad). Here, it’s generally regarded as nuts. Presumably, this is because shoes were such a precious commodity for most of my participants when they were growing up, so the idea of someone choosing not to wear shoes - particularly in snow or mud - is pretty crazy.
Nevertheless, as I have for over four years now, I continue to stubbornly wear my multi-colored collection of two-dollar, rubber-soled podiatric noise-makers. So, when it was decided that my housemates and I would help to clean up our street with some of our neighbors in recognition of Earth Day, I thought nothing of setting out with a pair of basic brown flippies. We split up upon leaving the house, armed with bags, gloves, and a tenacity that would have put Al Gore himself to shame.
My friend Kristen and I headed up towards Camp AJ. We skipped our way along the road, looking for pieces of trash to pick up, bursting at the seams with a burning desire to rid Sandlick Road of any and all refuse. Imagine our chagrin when we discovered that there weren’t nearly as many “trashes” on the road as we’d anticipated. Not wanting to be the team that came up short, we started to look off-road for our treasure. I suppose it was about fifteen minutes into the project when we thought we’d hit our payload.
We both spotted it at the same time: a neat little row of cans and bottles down the embankment, resting comfortably on a bed of dry leaves. We knew what we had to do. For God, country, and Mother Earth, we had to get down there to retrieve them. We picked different places at the side of the road to make our way down the steep slope and gingerly began to sidestep to the bottom. Kristen made it down quickly and successfully. Me? Well, not so much.
I slipped and slid the short way down which, in and of itself, was nothing to write home about. It’s no secret that grace is not a God-given aspect of my nature; I mean, let’s face it, how I’ve made it this far without major catastrophic incident is miraculous. Kristen and I both laughed at me when I stopped. Mid-snort, though, I looked down to address a sudden, sharp pain in the bottom of my foot. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was a broken soda bottle stuck in there. It’d gone right through my flip flop and directly into my heel.
Kristen and I just sort of contemplated it for a while. Then, given that the puncture was on the bottom of my foot, it started to bleed pretty freely. Kristen sprung into action, removing the bottle and promptly cuffing my jeans so as to avoid blood stains (following the order of my own priorities). We were pretty much at a loss for what to do next after that, so she helped me back up to the road and I began to limp my way back to the house, leaving Valley Forge-style bloody footprints on the pavement.
Lucas intercepted us and graciously offered to help me back up to the house, volunteering himself as a human crutch. I swear, it really wasn’t that bad. It looked much worse than it actually was. All the same, he patiently cleaned and bandaged the wound, and I nearly felt as good as new. I carefully limped out into the kitchen, where I was asked by the housemates coming in - fresh off the victory won from an hour’s work of picking up trash and beautifying the earth - when my last tetanus shot was. I couldn’t remember, but reassured them that I’d be perfectly fine and that the inoculation would be entirely unnecessary. I was quickly voted down, though, and when the threat was made to call my dad about it, I consented to bring myself to a Booneville clinic.
The waiting room of this particular clinic is decorated appropriately for its clientele. The beige walls sport three different mounted animals, and I overheard one patient telling another about the coon he’d killed in his yard just a half hour before. When everything was said and done, though, I got the shot. I did not get lockjaw. And I will continue to wear flip flops until my arches fall. But, given that my grandmother’s reading this, I’ll make the promise to wear thick-soled shoes for the next trash clean-up.
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