Toe Pick!
Have you ever seen the 1992 figure skating movie, The Cutting Edge? It is my all-time favorite skating movie, and I am proud to say that I saw it in the movie theaters twice when it premiered. My friend Abby and I quoted that movie non-stop even though she wasn’t even a figure skater. Our favorite line, of course, was “Toe pick!” when the main male character kept tripping on his toe picks during his first skating practices with the lead female character.
Well, I am here to tell you that toe picks are indeed a tricky part of the blade. They will trip me up on occasion and did me in recently. You’d think that I’d be smarter than to allow these sharp, pointy devices to mess me up. You’d be wrong.
I was in the middle of a lesson during freestyle one day and was the oldest skater on the ice by at least 15 years. I ran through my program and had to do a series of tap toes during the following sequence. The next thing I knew, I fell forwards on the ice onto my injured knee. I was in such a state of shock that I just laid there for a good 30 seconds. My choreographer quickly came over and said something to the effect of, “Please tell me that isn’t your injured knee.” I nodded. Of course it was.
My knee turned the color of grape juice and swelled up to the size of a softball. In addition, my left arm was bleeding from skidding across the bumpy parts of the ice. The ice dance coach came over and literally lifted me up and put me on two feet. How embarrassing. Now I’ll be known as “that adult skater whom the dance coach had to lift up” or “the clumsy adult skater who tripped on her toe picks.” I’m surprised nobody yelled “toe pick!” at me. That would have been funny.
My therapist saw me a few days afterwards and said, “What happened?!” I told him that I had fallen, but thankfully I didn’t cause further damage to my already tender knees. A week later, he complimented me on the lovely shade of yellow that the bruise had turned.
So I guess the lesson here today is that you need to watch out for those dang toe picks. Otherwise, you’ll be dealing with a bruised body and a bruised ego.
#toepick
