LAUGH LINES : Let He Who Falls Down Cast the First Bone

You’ll excuse me if I’m not answering my home phone this week. I’m trying. It’s just that with this cast on my broken ankle, I’m not as quick to the phone as I’d like to be. By the time I actually pick up, not only has the caller hung up, his 401(k) has kicked in.

Yes, a cast. At work, concerned people see my exposed toes sticking out like cocktail weenies and ask me how this terrible tragedy occurred--honestly, it is not concerned people so much as concerned women ; men are about as sensitive and sympathetic as Singaporean customs officers.

In a situation like this, one is tempted to make up something preposterously heroic and melodramatic, but I tell them the homely truth: While competing in the preliminary trials for the 1996 Olympic triathlon, running 20 miles while listening to the Books on Tape version of Proust’s “Remembrances of Things Past,” narrated in the original French by Charles Aznavour, I suddenly became aware of an errant javelin heading directly for a baby carriage nearby. At the last possible second, tragically injuring my foot in the process, I lunged and caught the deadly projectile in my teeth, thereby saving the life of the child, who turned out to be grandson of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I stepped in a hole, OK?

It’s so pathetic, isn’t it? This is what happens when you get old: The act of walking is too stressful. It breaks your bones.

It’s gotta be calcium, right? I’m not getting enough calcium, and so my bones have more cracks than Henny Youngman, thank you very much, you’ve been a great audience. They tell me three glasses of milk a day will help, but I feel stupid drinking milk at my age; I’m hoping I can substitute five Kahluas and cream, and then my bones will be strong enough to absorb the blow when I fall off the bar stool.

Anyway, the doctor puts on a hard cast, which is fine, because a cast is right out there in the open, screaming, “I’m hurt. Pity me!” It might embarrass a woman; she might think a cast makes her seem awkward. For a man it’s a badge of honor, because it says: “Here’s a studly guy who’s bearing up unbelievably well under this terrible pain.” (Although in my case, it might also say: “Look at this schmo. No matter how nice you dress him, he’ll step in a ditch.”)

Now you can get colors on your cast. I was offered a variety of hot colors and patterns, a Barney dinosaur pattern and a camouflage pattern--which I suppose would’ve made me invisible if I invaded Haiti. I asked, “Have you got anything in an insouciant Chardonnay?” I chose lime green, because I thought it would attract girls named “Constance Katherine Buffington, but people call me Buffy.”

One big problem with a cast is itching. What can you do? I use a wire coat hanger. I shove it down there and claw away like I’m hacking through the rain forest. Doctors tell you not to put anything down your cast. The man who set my cast told me that recently a teen-age boy complained of a rancid odor from his cast. This went on for weeks, growing more and more hideous until the cast was cut away . . . and they found half a ham and cheese sandwich down there.

Which leads us into the problem of showering. You don’t want a cast to get wet, because it will crumble and mildew and stink, but you need to bathe or so will you. I have solved this by tying my left leg up in a hefty bag so that I look like something out of Robert DeNiro’s trunk in “Goodfellas,” and then I hang my leg over the side of the tub, pretty much like a leg of lamb. If anyone came in the bathroom and saw me washing this way, it would be as embarrassing to me as Patti Davis is to Ron and Nancy.

The worst problem, though, comes when you walk around the house. You’re fine on carpet. But once you hit tile or wood, the cast slips, and you’re pretty much like a dog on a waxed floor, paws going every which way. I’ve already fallen on my keister three times since I got the cast, and I fully expect to break at least two more bones before this one heals.