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I hid from my own sister in the parking lot at Cahoon Park last Wednesday. 20 minutes, engine off, because my heel wouldn't take the brake pedal. When she knocked on the window I held up my phone and pretended I was on a call. She walked to her car. She waved. I waved back with the phone still at my ear and nobody on the other end of it. I'm 63. I've been playing pickleball for 2 years, since my sister needed a fourth, and for the last 18 months my heel has been deciding how many mornings I get. 5 became 4. 4 became 3. Last Wednesday was one of 2. I didn't tell my husband. I didn't tell my sister. I told a shoe fitter on Main Street 8 days later, by accident. I'd walked in for my third pair of court shoes in 18 months and said, lightly, "nothing fancy, I only play twice a week now." He sat down on the fitting stool and said, "Ma'am, when you say you play twice a week now, what do you mean." I want to stop the story right there, because I don't know if a stranger has ever asked me anything like that in my entire life. Eighteen months of my heel deciding how many mornings I got, and 2 doctors, and my husband Bill, and my sister Yvette, and none of them had ever asked me what I meant by it. They had all said "overuse" or "plantar fasciitis" or "at your age" and moved on. My name is Dorothy. I was the postmaster in Roswell for 34 years before I retired in 2022, and then I sat in my house for 2 years with nothing to run. In March of 2024 my sister called and said the Wednesday group at Cahoon Park needed a fourth, just once. I had never held a paddle. I went. Within a month it was 5 mornings a week. The 7:30 group. Marge with her clipboard, Yvette and her husband Ray, a retired state trooper named Ortiz who calls everybody "chief," Denny's afterward, and a group text at 6 in the morning that just says "Need one for 7:30." Bill started calling himself a pickleball widower and he was only half joking. It was the first thing in 10 years I wanted to do every single day. About 6 months in, my body sent the bill. Not during. Never during. On the court I felt 45. It was the first step out of bed the next morning. Like stepping on a tack. Hand on the dresser, count to ten. By month 10 it had started to travel. The heel first thing. Then the inside of my left knee on the stairs. Then a low ache across my lower back by lunch. I was taking the stairs sideways the way my mother did at 80 and lifting my left leg into the car with both hands. By month 14 it was there all the time. Not one spot. The whole left side of me, like something was sending the bill up the chain. My doctor pressed on my heel, sent me for an X-ray that came back clean, and said "plantar fasciitis, it's overuse, the knee and the back are compensating, cut it back to 2 or 3 days, come back in a year." A podiatrist in Artesia said "common at your age for people who've picked up a court sport" and sold me $190 custom orthotics. I wore them every day for 8 months. The mornings didn't change. And here is the part I have never said out loud to anybody. They were right. Cutting back worked. Skip a Wednesday and by Friday the heel was quiet. Less pickleball, less pain. Every doctor had been proven right by my own foot. I hated that it worked. Because the only lever anybody had ever handed me was the one that took the mornings away. 5 became 4. 4 became 3. By last fall I was down to Wednesday and Saturday, and even those two cost me Thursday and Sunday. So you stop saying it. You stop answering "Need one for 7:30." You start parking at the far end of the lot so nobody watches you get out of the car. That is what 18 months of a heel does to a person. It makes you a woman who texts "next week!" to a group chat from her own couch. Which is why I made a small joke to a shoe fitter about playing twice a week now. His name was Hector. Hector asked me what I meant. I said, "I mean twice a week is what I've got left. I mean I hold the dresser every morning. I mean I take the stairs sideways because the knee has started in too. I mean after the last Wednesday I sat in my car in the lot at Cahoon for 20 minutes because the heel wouldn't take the brake pedal, and when my sister knocked on the window I held up my phone and pretended I was on a call." I hadn't told anybody about the parking lot. I told a stranger in a shoe store about the parking lot. Hector nodded. He did not tell me it was my age. He said, "Do you have 20 minutes. I want to tell you what my son told me 3 years ago." He took me to the back office. On the desk was a picture of a young man in a clinic polo holding a paddle. Hector said, "My son Mateo. He's a physical therapist in Las Cruces. He's the reason I'm playing pickleball on Mondays and Thursdays at 68 instead of sitting in a chair like my father did." He said, "My father played tennis in this town for 40 years. At 60 his heel started. Dr. Padilla told him wear and tear, play less. So he played less. 5 days became 3. 3 became 1. At 63 he hung the racket on a nail in the garage and never took it down. He sat in a recliner for 8 years and died at 71. The last thing he said about it was 'my body told me to stop, mijo, so I stopped.'" He said, "At 65 my heel started. Same heel. Same morning. I thought, of course. This is the Ortega men. I went down to 1 day a week and started looking at the nail in the garage." He said, "Then Mateo came home for Easter and I told him. He did not do what the doctors did. He asked me exactly what I meant. Then he walked out to my truck and pulled the insole out of my court shoe." Hector picked up the shoe I had just tried on, pulled the liner out, and set it on the desk. He said, "Press your thumb into that." Flat gray foam. It went down and stayed down. He said, "That's a walking insole. Every shoe on this wall has one. Same piece of foam." And then he told me what Mateo had told him. The first time anybody explained my heel to me instead of naming it. Walking is 1 times your bodyweight, straight down. That is what that foam is built for. The one in the shoe and the $190 ones from Artesia too. Pickleball is the opposite. You explode sideways, stop hard, push off again, hundreds of times a morning. Every stop puts 3 to 4 times your bodyweight through your foot, from the side. Flat walking foam has nothing on the sides to catch that. So your foot catches it instead. Every stop. Every game. At first that's just sore, and rest fixes sore. That's why cutting back worked. That's why the doctors were right. But every stop that nothing catches wears the foot down faster than it can recover, and after a few weeks there's no soreness left to calm. Just wear. And what the foot can't absorb goes up the chain. Knees. Lower back. It's not 4 problems. It's one load, landing in the wrong place, 5 mornings a week. He said, "Mateo told me, Dad, Dr. Padilla was half right. Something is wearing. He just never asked what was doing the wearing. It wasn't your birthday. It was where the load lands. Playing less was never the only lever. It was just the only one he had." I sat there with my coffee getting cold and felt something I had not felt in 18 months. Somebody explaining a thing to me. I said, "So what did Mateo tell you to do." Hector said Mateo came back 6 weeks later with a small box and set it on this desk. A pair of insoles. OnAce. Built for the sideways load. Not the gel ones. Not the $190 ones. Those are built for straight down and fold from the side, which is why every one of them helps for a few weeks and then doesn't. This one has a firm zone along the outer heel and arch, right where the sideways stop lands. The Side-Catch. It holds its shape at 3 to 4 times your bodyweight, so the load lands on it instead of on your foot. And under the heel a Poron core that pushes back instead of going flat, so it's still there in month three. I said, "Won't that make my feet lazy." Hector said, "The soft ones do. This isn't soft. It's structure. There's a difference between a cushion and a wall." He had been playing on them for 2 years and 8 months. Two weeks in, he walked to his truck after 3 games and was halfway across the lot before he realized he hadn't done the hop. By month 6 he played the Saturday round robin with his wife for the first time in 4 years. He said, "Ma'am, my father hung his racket on a nail. I'm 68 and I played 4 games last Saturday. I'm not telling you it will happen this way for you. I'm telling you what happened for me." He wrote it on the back of a business card in blue pen. OnAce. onace.store. He said, "60-day money-back guarantee. If it does nothing for you, you send them back and they refund every penny. Judge it on your own stairs." I ordered 2 pairs that night after Bill had gone to bed. I did not tell Bill. Here is what happened over the next 6 weeks, honestly. Week 1, nothing. I pulled the gray foam out, put the OnAce in, played my Wednesday. The next morning my hand went to the dresser like always. Week 2 was the parking lot. Wednesday, 3 games, and I was halfway across the lot at Cahoon before I realized I hadn't done the hop. I stopped and put the heel down flat on the asphalt. It wasn't nothing. It was the first thing. The next morning I only counted to four. Week 3 was the morning. I swung my legs out of bed, my hand went to the dresser out of habit, and my foot was already on the floor. Flat. I stood there long enough that Bill rolled over and asked if I was okay. I said, "I'm just standing here." Week 4 was the Thursday. The text went off at 6:04. "Need one for 7:30." I had played Wednesday. I had not played 2 days in a row since the fall before last. I typed "in," deleted it, typed it again and sent it. 4 games. The next morning I took the stairs forward, all 14 of them, and the knee didn't say a word. I called Yvette from the bottom step. She said "Dot, are you crying," and I said, "a little." Week 5, Bill. Back porch, Modelo, my foot moving on the boards, heel down, heel up. He said, "Dot, what are you doing with your foot." I said, "I'm going tomorrow." He said, "You went today." I said, "Sit down. Let me tell you a story." When I was done he said, "Dorothy Ann. Why on earth would you not have told me." I said, "Because I didn't think it was going to work." He said, "Do you know how many mornings I have watched you hold that dresser and pretend you weren't holding it." I did not know that. Week 6, the Summer Social. Memorial Day weekend at Cahoon Park. Potluck, and a round robin where Marge puts every name in the hat. You don't get to sit. Last year I brought the green chile casserole and watched my sister play 6 rounds with somebody else. Marge read the first pairings. Yvette looked at me across the picnic table and I saw her decide not to say anything. I stood up. I walked out to court 3. The first ball came wide to my backhand side. I went and got it. I felt the stop, I want to be clear about that, but the load landed on the insole, not on me. The heel just held. I hit the ball down the line and Ortiz yelled "chief!" from the next court and I laughed out loud. I played all 6 rounds. We lost the last one 11-9 to Ray and the trooper and I did not care even a little. The next morning I walked barefoot across the kitchen tile and was halfway across before I realized what I was doing. I want to be careful about what I'm saying. My heel is not 40 again. After 4 days in a row it's a little tender in the morning, the way a foot that played 4 days in a row at 63 is allowed to be. What I'm telling you is that a woman who had not put her foot flat on the floor in 18 months is back to 4 mornings a week, and sat in the Denny's booth last Thursday arguing with a retired state trooper about his serve. The knee hasn't said anything on the stairs since May. The back I'd forgotten about until I noticed it was gone. If you are the woman who stopped answering the group text, or parks at the far end of the lot, or sat in her car for 20 minutes and held up her phone so her sister would walk past, I want you to know something. Playing less was never the only lever. It was just the only one anybody handed you. The company is OnAce. An insole built for the sideways load, not for walking. A firm Side-Catch along the outer heel and arch where the stop lands, and a Poron core that still pushes back in month three. You pull the gray foam out of the court shoes you already own and put these in. 60 days. A full money-back guarantee. If it isn't working, you send them back and they refund every penny. 👉 onace.store/products/pickleball P.S. Go out to your car right now, pull the insole out of your court shoe, and press your thumb into it. If it goes down and stays down, that's what you've been playing on. That is the whole difference. It is why Hector told me. P.P.S. Don't sit on your couch after the first session waiting for something. One morning 2 or 3 weeks in, your hand goes to the dresser out of habit and your foot is already on the floor, and you stand there looking down at it, and you know. And if it never happens, it's a 60-day money-back guarantee. You send them back. 👉 onace.store/products/pickleball