From a few years ago,
my move back to Seattle…
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Craigslist won’t let me sell it, eBay won’t let me sell it, and Reddit won’t let me sell it, so I’ll try selling it right here.
For sale: My wife’s prosthetic leg. Left. Includes shoe. It’s a brand new leg — has maybe five miles on the odometer, all indoors. Put a lamp over it, and pretend it’s a major award.
My asking price? Psssh, I barely care. Make me an offer that covers the cost of shipping plus something for my time boxing it up and taking it to the post office, and my wife’s former fake leg is yours.
Let me grouse about it, though: If you ever need a fake leg for walking on, don’t go to Hanger Clinics. That’s the big conglomerate with offices everywhere, that made Stephanie’s leg — wrong. Prosthetics is all they do, but Hanger’s motto should be “You’ll never walk again.”
Prosthetics are custom-fitted for each individual limbless customer, but Steph’s leg never fit. Wearing it was always painful for her, and Hanger refused to re-do it. When she complained, they took the leg apart, tightened this and loosened that, put it back together, and then it didn’t fit in a slightly different way.
Again and again.
Damn it all, the look on my wife’s face as she slowly realized that she’d spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
And you’d be amazed at the price of a new prosthetic. Our insurance paid 100%, but when she signed as ‘receiving’ the bottom line was MORE THAN $15,000 — for a chunk of plastic and silicone she could never walk on, except in practice sessions down the hall again and back, until it made her stump bleed.
♦ ♦ ♦
More cheerfully, here’s something else found while packing the living room for the move:
My wife loved the cartoon Bob’s Burgers, and especially Louise, the girl on the show who wears pink bunny ears. So as a surprise, I bought Steph a pair of hand-sewn Louise-bunny ears. They were expensive, but I knew she’d love ’em.
I also bought this cheap plastic bucket ⟸ for a dollar from the dollar store, because it was easier than wrapping paper. Stuffed the ears inside the pink bucket, topped it with a pink bow, and gave it to my ever-lovin’ wife.
She hated the ears. They’re cute in a cartoon, but unsettling in real life, on a grownup’s head. She loved the plastic bucket, though, and used it for storing snacks and candies, pens, and her cell phone.
The ears were given to Goodwill years ago. The cheap plastic bucket is coming with me to Seattle, another memento of my wife.
2/24/2022, in assorted pages
Republished 4/25/2025
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