No Cooley, he: Lame ankle but feeble tolerance

I'd like to welcome Washington Redskin Chris Cooley to the Bum Ankle Club. I joined about 10 years ago when I was walking down some steps in Cambridge, Mass. For no apparent reason, my right foot sort of turned in on itself. I felt a horrendous stab of pain, tasted bile rising in my throat and then looked down to see that someone had stuffed a tennis ball under the skin on my ankle.

I hobbled home and, a few days later, went to a doctor. That's where I learned that when you experience so much instant pain that you almost throw up, you probably should see a physician immediately. And I learned that, having sprained my ankle once, I was now more likely to sprain it again.

Which I have done and continue to do. My ankle goes out more than Paris Hilton, most recently two months ago when I was lugging a duffel bag to the bus station in Oxford, England.

It's funny, isn't it, how we often blame other people for our misfortunes? There I was, crumpled on Little Clarendon Street, my right ankle throbbing, left pant leg ripped from where my knee had intersected with the pavement, and all I could do was curse My Lovely Wife, who was 3,000 miles away back home.

Why had she insisted I carry the Christmas presents for my English niece and nephews in my bag rather than mail them? Hadn't that made an already heavy bag even heavier, straining my compromised joint?

And as for that bag, why was I using it anyway? Why hadn't she insisted I take a rolling suitcase? Surely she knew that I was incapable of making decisions for myself.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but I had last sprained my ankle in May. The interval between ankle sprains is shortening. In the future, I can expect to sprain my ankle every 20 to 30 seconds.

I wince when I see someone's ankle give out, like Cooley's did in that game against the Eagles. I know what that's like, Chris! The shock, the disbelief, the sick realization that this formerly solid thing now has as much rigidity as pudding.

I hate to criticize evolution, but whatever series of mutations came up with the human ankle was a waste of DNA. There's so much riding on the ankle, and it's so flawed. All those moving parts, all the weight it must bear, and yet it's made out of balsa wood and old rubber bands.

(Two years ago, when I lived in Oxford, I bought an expensive pair of wingtips from a cobbler. "A pair of typical American feet," he said when I took off my shoes so he could measure me. What's that supposed to mean? I asked. "Narrow feet, slim ankles, big body." Thanks a lot, buddy. You could stand to lose a few pork pies yourself.)

Cooley actually broke his ankle, something I haven't quite managed to do. He says he could be back playing this season. And maybe he can. He's highly conditioned. A pro. I think most NFL players play with sprained ankles, broken ribs, fractured spleens and bad athlete's foot. Not me. The weight of the bedsheets on my foot makes me whimper.

Really, My Lovely Wife should be waiting on me hand and foot. She would be, too, except that last week she badly pulled a muscle in her leg. Dancing. At her high school reunion. Now the two of us hobble around our house, each hoping the other one heals first so we can be taken care of.

Ankles? Legs? Bodies? They aren't worth the trouble.

Table talk

I had lunch the other day with the King of Blintzes. That's Seymour Rich, who used to run several restaurants in Washington, including Seymour's, Rich's and the Golden Table. For a while Seymour had a line of frozen blintzes available in supermarkets, thus the nickname.

The Golden Table was at 23rd and Virginia NW, near the State Department, and drew many of its most loyal customers from there. So many, in fact, that one day a man approached Seymour and asked whether he might install a recording device under a table. For a fee, of course.

Seymour never did learn what side the man was on. In any case, he politely declined the offer.

It makes me wonder how many other old Cold War battles were fought in the diners, delis and white-tablecloth restaurants of Washington.