The Unbearable Slowness of Being Me

Playing frisbee yesterday, I collided with a friend as we both dove for the disc. His knee came down on my lower left leg. It hurt when it happened, but I thought it was one of those things I could shake off, and would be fine 5 minutes later. I continued to play, though limping significantly for another 5 or 10 minutes, before I decided that I would be better off on the sidelines. But when I got up to go back home after having sat there for 20-30 minutes, I could barely walk. This morning, it was just as bad - I'm hobbling everywhere I go. And really slowly. It feels really weird to go so slowly everywhere, but when I try to go faster I move my leg somehow and the intense shooting pain stops me altogether. It's really interesting how much different it feels to go at this pace though. It throws everything off. People have trouble going as slowly as I am. I've walked with three different people who ended up walking about 8 feet in front of me, in the middle of conversations, before realizing and turning around....but it keeps happening...they can't slow down enough. It also impacts the way I'm used to acting. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like there's an etiquette around seeing someone you know on the street. Specifically, it governs how far away you should be before you actually say hi/make eye contact. If you see someone half a block ahead, coming your way....you don't stare at them, or wave then....because then there's all this weird lag time before you actually are in speaking distance, and no one's sure whether to maintain eye contact, or go back to walking, and then say hi once you're closer, or what. So as soon as I notice a friend or acquaintance ahead of me on the sidewalk, I make it a point to look elsewhere until we're within a reasonable distance to facilitate this whole interaction. And I think that I've refined this distance over time. If it's too far ahead, you end your short "Hi, how're you?" "Good, yourself?" "Fine thanks" dialogue before you actually pass each other, and if it's too short a distance, this dialogue gets cut off somewhere in the middle, and nobody feels very good about it. The point of all this is: in reality, it's a time constraint, but because I generally have a constant walking speed, I've come to think of it as a certain distance away. But now I'm all messed up. I acknowledge someone, and then it takes me 45 more seconds to get to where they're standing. This better clear up soon. The student care center poked me a few times, bent my foot around, and then gave me high-dosage ibuprofen and a couple ice packs and sent me home. So we'll see how things progress.