Lesson one: Fall. If you unconsciously brace against a fall, and twist and turn your right foot just so, you won't be driving, biking or walking for up to three months. The foot will break.

Living with crutches is now your daily surprise. Coffee making itself in the kitchen, you need to plan the next project. How do you get the newspaper rolled in plastic, and your neighbor's too, from the end of the path that goes from your front door to the driveway? The neighbor's path hits yours at a corner leaning to their house, and you figure out how to toss their paper near their stoop as you swing your way back up the path. Each step with the crutches is like walking half a block. From the door to the driveway, it's twenty steps, or ten blocks, or easy a mile. Getting the newspaper and coming back inside is a two mile walk, a short walk that only takes a half hour or so. The three minutes spent retrieving the newspaper burn an equivalent amount of energy as walking for two miles. This is because you need and use so many more muscles to move each step. Shoulders, upper outer arms, lower outer arms, abdomen, thighs, buttocks. You decide you've earned the right to sit down at the table and unfold the paper and see what's the headline.

My God! A tsunami in California, from that earthquake in Japan yesterday! The wave traveled all the way across the ocean to wreak docks and crash boats in Crescent City. You wonder how much energy it took for each swell of the wave to move one wave-length across the sea. It is surely much more energy than you use to take one step with crutches. Lesson two: keep things in perspective.