Dave and the Knee
Dave twisted his knee one Saturday afternoon in the driveway. He and Sam had been fooling around with a basketball, one of those impromptu father-son contests where neither of them actually knew the rules but both were convinced they were winning.
Sam, taller and younger, had the advantage. But Dave had experience—or at least, what he thought was experience. He made a sudden pivot, a dramatic move meant to show Sam who really knew the game, and something inside his knee gave a loud, wet pop.
He froze in place, his hands on his hips, trying to play it cool. “Just a little tweak,” he said, though the color had drained from his face. Sam tilted his head and said, “Dad, you look like you just got shot.”
Morley came outside just in time to see Dave hobbling toward the porch like a man escaping a pirate duel. “What happened this time?” she asked, though she already knew the answer. With Dave, there was always a “this time.”
The doctor told him it wasn’t serious—yet. A mild ligament strain. But he warned Dave that the next one could mean bigger trouble: surgery, long recovery, months of physiotherapy.
Dave nodded solemnly, the way you do when someone gives you very serious advice. But in his mind, he had already decided that this was going to be handled the old-fashioned way: with grit, denial, and perhaps an ice pack if Morley forced it on him.
Physiotherapy, as far as Dave was concerned, was not medicine. It was medieval. He was convinced every physiotherapist had trained by studying the works of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.
“They don’t heal you,” he told Kenny Wong over coffee. “They break you. Then they tell you it’s good for you.” Kenny, who had once been told to stretch before jogging and promptly tore his hamstring, nodded in sympathy.
This was not, in Dave’s mind, his first basketball injury. No, no. His “career” had been marked by drama from the very beginning.
Back in high school, Dave had played for the North Bay District Wildcats. Or rather, he had been listed on the team. His main role was to be called in when everyone else had fouled out, sprained something, or wandered off to the cafeteria.
But Dave loved basketball. He loved the sound of the ball thumping on the hardwood, the squeak of sneakers, the roar of the crowd. The crowd, of course, rarely roared for him.
There was one game against Timmins that he remembered with both horror and pride. Dave, filled with sudden inspiration, decided he was going to dunk the ball.
He was five-foot-eight on a good day, with shoes and hair. Dunking was not in his repertoire. But Dave was not the kind of man to let reality interfere with ambition.
He charged the net, leapt as high as his legs would carry him, and slammed the ball with all his might.
The ball hit the rim like a cannonball, ricocheted back, and smacked Dave directly in the forehead.
He collapsed, unconscious. When he came to, the crowd was cheering. For Timmins.
Later, he would say this was the moment he realized his real talent wasn’t in sports but in “building character.” And so, when his knee gave out in the driveway decades later, he told himself, “This is just another character-building injury.”
The doctor had given him stretches. He had given him resistance-band exercises. He had even demonstrated them. “Do these at home,” he said.
Dave promised he would. And then, of course, he didn’t.
Morley would find the resistance band on the kitchen counter, coiled like an unused party streamer. She’d leave sticky notes: Ten reps, twice a day.
Dave would read the note, sigh heavily, and pour himself a coffee instead. “Tomorrow,” he’d mutter. Tomorrow never came.
When Morley asked, “Did you do your physio?” Dave would look wounded, as though she had accused him of a terrible crime. “I’m pacing myself,” he’d say. “These things take time.”
“You’re supposed to pace your exercises,” Morley would reply, “not your excuses.”
This wasn’t Dave’s first run-in with modern exercise either. A few years back, Morley had convinced him to join the YMCA. “Just to keep in shape,” she’d said.
On his first day, Dave wandered around the weight room like a man lost in a foreign country. The machines all looked like they’d been designed by NASA for zero-gravity torture experiments.
He finally chose the elliptical trainer. “Looks safe,” he muttered.
For thirty glorious seconds, Dave felt invincible. His legs pumped, his arms swung, he was practically an Olympian.
Then he realized he couldn’t stop. His legs churned faster and faster, like a hamster on a wheel.
Sweat poured down his face. His shirt clung to him. He reached for the stop button, but the machine yanked his arm back each time like a cruel trick.
People gathered to watch. A kindly old lady called, “You’re doing great, dear!”
Finally, Dave launched himself sideways off the machine, landed in a heap on the yoga mats, and lay there gasping like a shipwreck survivor.
That was the end of his YMCA career. From then on, he insisted exercise should come “naturally.” Like walking to the fridge.
So it made perfect sense to everyone who knew him that Dave would resist physiotherapy.
The problem was, everyone else was invested in his recovery. Morley kept track of his exercises. Sam teased him. The neighbors, catching wind of his injury, suggested yoga classes.
Even the physiotherapist herself, a cheerful woman named Stephanie, had developed a certain look. It was the look teachers give when they know you haven’t done your homework.
“You’re not doing your exercises, are you, Dave?” she said one afternoon.
“Of course I am!” Dave replied. “I do them all the time. At home. In private. I don’t like to brag about it.”
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “Funny,” she said. “Your knee doesn’t agree.”
Soon it wasn’t just Morley and Stephanie keeping him accountable. Sam began making jokes about medieval torture.
“Careful, Dad,” he’d say, “Stephanie might bring out the iron maiden next week.”
Dave would grumble. “She already has. It’s called a stationary bike.”
Even the neighbors got involved. When Dave shuffled past Mrs. Patterson’s house, she called, “Don’t forget to do your stretches, dear!”
Kenny Wong suggested they do the exercises together, as a kind of support group. The idea of Kenny wobbling on one leg with a resistance band nearly convinced Dave to try. Nearly.
But when it came down to it, Dave always found a reason to avoid the work. There was always a book to read, a coffee to drink, a record to play.
And then, one day, while reaching for a jar of pickles on the top shelf, Dave’s knee buckled again.
He let out a strangled cry, part pain, part surprise, and part something else: the sudden realization that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t invincible anymore.
Morley rushed in, exasperated. “This is exactly what the doctor warned you about!” she said.
Dave sat on the floor, clutching the pickle jar. “I was just trying to make a sandwich,” he muttered.
“Dave,” Morley said gently, “you have to do the exercises.”
And finally, sitting there with his pride and his pickles, Dave admitted—maybe she was right.