One Pants Leg at a Time

Whenever a team is facing a highly ranked opponent, this is what coaches will sometimes say to de-mystify the aura of the other team.  “They aren’t so great, they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like we do.”  They aren’t supermen.  They don’t perform supernatural things like putting pants on both legs at once.

For me, it has taken on a slightly different context. Like everyone else, I put my pants on one leg at a time.  But, it has become much more difficult. My left leg no longer has sufficient cartilage in the knee to allow me to smoothly rotate or use my left leg to support the rest of my body without significant pain. In fact, it hurts “like the dickens”* more often than not.  (I get that saying from my mom.)

Have you ever paid attention to how you put your pants on?  I mean, you just about can’t put pants on two legs at a time without significant help.  You have to have one leg to stand on while the other is raised in a manner to allow the pant leg to slip over the foot and up the leg.  Which leg do you put on first?  I always start with my left leg. I don’t know why. I have never observed anyone else enough to know which leg is first for them. I have asked a few people and so far no one knows which leg they start with.  It hasn’t occurred to them to note.  I just know for me it is my left leg.

This has become a problem since my left leg is the starter leg.  I get the left leg on fine because I use the right leg as a support. But, since my left leg hurts so much, I have to either sit down, or lean heavily against some support structure to ease the weight on my left knee and allow me put on the right leg.

The second problem is being a creature of habit. I have tried to start the process with my right leg, thinking that doing so would allow me to stand on my ‘good’ right leg while putting on the left leg.  Well, it just wouldn’t work.  A habit I’ve been following for over 60 years just wouldn’t be broken.  Try as I might, and I did try several times, it just wouldn’t work. I would get that right leg in and try to go to the left and … something wasn’t happening. My balance was awkward, my effort failed and I couldn’t follow through.  I suppose I could have kept practicing, but, it didn’t seem to be worthwhile.

I’ve decided to get my knee fixed instead. It needs to happen, with or without the pants problem.  Other things like getting into and out of cars, going down stairs, and the list goes on …  have become more and more precarious, risky events.

January 5th, I will be having knee surgery, getting a newish knee, something called a “Stryker Triathlon” knee.  The doc says it’ll be about 3 days in the hospital, about 3 weeks to get to where I can walk without the aid of a cane or walker and 3 months to learn how to walk ‘normally’ again.  And, it takes a year to forget there is something new in your knee every time you get up.  I’ll take it over what I’m doing now.

It is a little thing, I know, knowing which leg you start with when putting your pants on.  Your life and mine won’t be better by knowing this.  It’s good to know that old habits are hard to break so make sure you develop good ones.  And I’ll try to keep you up-to-date on progress with my knee.

PS.. (*  I didn’t know from whence the expression “hurts like the dickens” was derived. I had to look it up, or google it, as they say.  It seems this is a minced- oath, or euphemism, used by the sly English to approximate profanity without being such. “Like the dickens” is one-off from saying “like the devil”.  It is even used by Shakespeare in the play “the Merry Wives of Windsor”.

I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of.

Mom, how Shakespearean of you?  And, no, I have no idea how to parse that sentence.)