The Adventures of Gimpy

Spoiler alert: Gimpy doesn’t have adventures. Because Gimpy has her leg in an immobilizer.

Another spoiler alert: I am Gimpy. Since my freak accident that dislocated my kneecap, my friends and professors have taken to calling me Gimpy. And I’ve been learning a lot of hard lessons: like what to do when your health insurance doesn’t want to cover for you; that after so many weeks, your now-unused muscles start to wither and entropy and how long it actually takes to heal after an injury.

It’s hard to believe that I use to climb stairs, get in and out of cars, sit at a desk in classes and think nothing of it and now it’s a real challenge. I am adjusting but there’s a new obstacle everyday: from blocking scenes to using a dustpan, I am appreciating healthy, working kneecaps more and more!

An even harder lesson I am learning: how this affects my doing stage combat. One of my biggest challenges in learning stage combat was learning to use my knees, stay low and centered since my (wrong) instinct was to stand tall and match my opponents. I call this the world’s biggest lesson on teaching me to use my knees to fight. Now, I am going to have to re-learn to walk before I can learn to fight again. I’ve started physical therapy and I’ve given myself the goal: February 1st 2014, I want to be on my feet and fighting again to take my SPTs in knife and broadsword by next May.

Until then, I’m accepting the fact that I am finished for the semester. Luckily, my last performance closed days before I hurt myself and the last few shows for 2013 are as the ASM. And I still have my desk-sitting theatre classes to blog about. I am already halfway through the fall semester! We’re passing the 200 day mark till graduation – kneecap or no kneecap, I’ve got a lot of life decisions to make regarding post-College Theatre Dork to blog about too.