Neighbor Dan

My neighbor Dan broke his collarbone a couple of months ago, while taking a nasty fall on a patch of ice.

We are friendly neighbors, but not overly so.  We talk in snippets here and there as we're both coming or going.

He's a Packers and Brewers fan, like we all are, and he likes to go out and have a few drinks, like most of us do. I like the fact that he's a responsible drinker, like too few us are, which I found out last summer when I noticed his truck wasn't parked in his driveway.

"Where's the truck?" I asked him. "Is it in the shop?"

"No," he said. "I might have had a couple too many last night. It's still at the bar."

Dan is a fisherman. That's not his job -- he works as a customer service rep at a health insurance administration company -- but it's who he is. He's particularly passionate about ice fishing, which I find intriguing. He can't exactly describe why he loves sitting on frozen water waiting for a walleye or whatever come by and bite his line, but he does. He's got all sort of interesting equipment and clothes, which he is constantly loading and unloading in his two-wheel drive Chevy S10.

But what I love most about Dan is his talent for understatement.

I found out about the collarbone in typical Dan fashion.

"Hey Dan, how's it going?" I called out as he was coming out of his house one evening.

"Hey Keith, not too bad," Dan said. "Broke my collarbone, though. Fell on the ice."

I knew that he didn't fall which ice fishing, because this was very early in our winter, and water was still open. We had had one snowfall, and the subsequent melt left little patches of ice scattered here and there: Mother Nature's booby traps.

Dan and I talked about the injury a bit. He was off of work for a while, he said. I told him I would do whatever I could to help, and that at least I could shovel his drive when needed. "If you need anything else," I told him, just ring the bell. "Kris and I will do what we can. Except I won't help you get dressed. You'll have to figure that out on your own."

In a subsequent conversation, he went into more detail about the injury. He had to keep his arm in a sling, because there's no cast for a broken collarbone.

"It's taking longer than normal for it to heal," Dan said. "I must have turned or something when I fell. There are fragments in there. The doctors call it a corkscrew break. I saw the x-rays, the bone is twisted. I'm not gonna lie, it's been pretty painful."

This was weeks ago. Dan's thanked me profusely for clearing his driveway, and even gave me a gas card to show his gratitude. I told him he didn't have to do that, I kind of like shoveling, and if the snow is deep, I have a snowblower. "Still, I really appreciate it," Dan said.

I talked to him this morning. He's back at work, and he's got an appointment with his doctor today.

"This should be the last one," he said.

"Wow," I said. "It's a cautionary tale."

"Yep," he said, nodding slowly. "It's been an experience."