I broke my ankle a couple of weeks ago. No, I didn’t do it trying to chop a board in half with my foot, so don’t even ask. And I didn’t shoot myself in the ankle with an M-16 or get knocked down by some Amazonian woman from a visiting roller derby team. It was much more exciting than that.

I stepped off a curb and fell.

It was the kind of accident you see in TV advertisements for MedicAlert bracelets, where some unfortunate woman slips on a stack of Guidepost magazines, lands split-eagle on a square of shag carpeting and breaks her hip. Except it wasn’t even that interesting.

I’ll be using crutches for the next month, which means there aren’t too many things I can try these days. No trying out for the Rockettes, for instance. Fan kicks are nearly impossible unless I hold onto a wall or lamppost.

However, because of the sweaty panic that comes with approaching newspaper deadlines, I did what every journalist does in a situation like this one. I pulled an idea out of thin air. Granted, it’s not the most exciting idea. But, surprisingly, it was an eye-opener.

I went to the Johnny Appleseed Festival in a wheelchair.

Attention, thrill seekers: Avoid this, if at all avoidable. That is my only advice.

During my two hours at the festival, I sat under a tree by the blacksmith, under a tree by the amphitheater and under a tree opposite a particularly busy portable toilet. There were a few of us under these trees actually – all in wheelchairs, patiently waiting for our friends and families to bring us apple fritters.

At one point, a woman came up to me and said, "Your husband is a saint. I had mine push me around in a chair last year and by the end he was begging to go home."

Allow me to explain why.

Getting this wheelchair through that festival was like being shoved around while sitting on top of a barbecue grill.

After about 20 minutes, I started to wonder whether caramel apples were worth navigating through pieces of gravel the size of a Ford Festiva. (They are.) Or whether the opportunity to sit and watch a group of people pop Beano before tucking into bowls of ham and bean soup was worth the approximately 15 minutes it took me to get to the top of the hill where they were sitting. (It wasn’t.)

Here’s the surprising part: Despite the wheelchair challenges I encountered – including hitting a pothole and getting tipped out of the chair like a bag of manure – this was one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had at the festival.

Instead of huffing around, chasing bagpipers and bum rushing women holding bags of caramel corn, I parked my wheelchair and watched people. That’s what a broken ankle and a wheelchair does to you. It slows you down to the point where you notice things.

And, it lets you eat a bag of caramel corn without the bothersome distraction of walking.

So maybe it wasn’t all bad.