Guys, I’m writing live from your brother city and my hometown of Baton Rouge. I am currently immobile due to a marvel of modern medicine known as the immobilizer, which reminds me of the Terminator, due to both similarity in sound and the fact that this immobilizer will effectively terminate any sort of active life I was planning on enjoying for the next week or two. I wish I could say that I fell off my bike, but lo and behold, my bike fell on me. I don’t want to talk about it.

When I realized that my knee was the size of a cantaloupe – but not nearly as tasty or nutritious – and that my bike, which I immediately forgave, would go without exercise for at least two weeks, I was a little bummed. Honestly, I threw my crutch across the room and nearly further injured myself by writhing in hyperbolic agony. Existentialist agony, not physical.

After thrashing around and cursing fate, I dove headfirst into the what-ifs: What if I hadn’t gone to work that day? What if I had stronger knees? What if I didn’t own a mutinous, murderous bike? And after a few hours of that, I moped and sighed every time I had to change ice or swallow Tylenol. These hours were punctuated only with the clang of crutches and the rip of Velcro from the brace on my knee, a sound that I thought I’d left far behind me in the annals of the 90s high top craze.

And then, revelation. I’d heard the phrase before, but it had never truly sunk in until now: It could always be worse.

Seriously. I could have broken my leg, my bike could have landed on my head, I could not have a leg, I could be Republican. And really, what is one little knee injury when you compare it to all of the other atrocities in the world? I should be ashamed of myself.

Here I am bitching and moaning when there is war, hunger, Sam Alito sitting comfortably on the Supreme Court bench and instant coffee. Here I am thinking that the world somehow chose to exact cosmic vengeance upon me in the form of an angry bike and weak knees.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes it takes hobbling around in the dorkiest of knee braces and a few weeks of physical restriction to serve you a steaming hot plate of humility with a scoop of relativity on the side. Milk spills, bikes fall, the GOP happens. Sometimes the most we can do is suck it up, strap on the Velcro and keep on crutchin’.