I took off my boot and sock and examined my ankle, expecting--and indeed, in that perverse manner of the injured male, rather hoping--to find some splintered bone straining at the skin like a tent pole, making everyone who saw it queasy. But the ankle was just faintly bluish and tender and very slightly swollen, and I realized that once more in my life I had merely achieved acute pain and not the sort of grotesque injury that would lead to a mercy flight by helicopter and a fussing-over by young nurses in erotically starched uniforms.