It was a possibility that occurred to me as I lay nose down in the carpet after one of my legs had stopped working. Not the entire leg, just the knee bit. Eager as ever to greet the new day, I had slid out from beneath the bed covers, stood up, heard a sound like a door creaking and collapsed.

I'm no stranger to body part failure. When I was younger it was my ankle that would spontaneously cease to function, sending me sprawling on footpaths and pirouetting into gutters, scattering astonished pedestrians as I went. "It's my ankle," I would cry as I rolled along the street, barrelling senior citizens and small children.

The ankle eventually healed itself and it is years now since I staged any spectacular downfallings. This does not include those occasions on which I have suffered self-inflicted concussion, the result of walking into immovable objects.

This last happened a week ago in the King George Square car park where I walked into my own car door. I'd opened it, momentarily forgot that I had done so and walked into its sharp, corner edge. I was in a rush when I collided with it, the resultant blow to my chest sending me bouncing off the car parked alongside and sliding to the floor.

If the car park staff have it on security camera tape, I'd like a copy. The footage of me staggering to my feet, kicking the bumper bar and beating the boot lid with a rolled up newspaper would make great viewing. Perhaps I could send it to Funniest Home Videos. Pitched against all those tapes of kids falling face down in their birthday cakes, I'd have to be a winner.

It was my knee, however, that most concerned me. "Oh no," I moaned as I hauled myself into a lounge chair and was struck by a chilling thought. "Not arthritis. I'm too young to creak."

I hobbled into the office and interrogated a colleague who suffered from what I regarded as an 'old person's' disease.

   "It cracks," I said, flexing the knee and producing a crack like a Jatz cracker snapping asunder.
   "It's not arthritis," he said.
   "Good," I said and hobbled off.

"Old football injury," I said to the quizzical eyebrows which followed my shuffling progress to my desk.

   "Did you play football?" asked a colleague, wondering how a man who regularly walks into walls and falls over chairs could ever have dashed down a footy field, sidestepping and diving for the touch line.
   "Ah, yes. For years," I said. "Paying the price for it now, though," I said, giving my knee and rub and easing into my chair.

This was, strictly speaking, true. I had played but that was at school and only because you had to. In an inglorious career spanning five years I recall touching the ball three times and on two of those occasions, it was thrown at me when I was looking the other way. By the time I realised it was heading towards me, it was too late to do what I usually did which was to pretend to fall over and I was forced to run with it. Not to score, just to escape from being pummelled.

This injury, I thought, could go back to the day we played the Land of the Giants, this being a school which had in its student body boarders from Papua New Guinea who were allegedly 15 years of age but who had to duck their heads to walk under the goal posts. Every time one of them looked at me, I threw myself on the ground and pretended to be unconscious.

Maybe that's when the injury began.

I hobbled into a cab the next day and the driver was immediately sympathetic. "Terrible thing, crook knees," he sighed. "But don't let them cut you open," he warned shaking his head. "Everyone who has knee operations ends up worse than ever within six months," he said.

Given recent revelations regarding the Queensland health system, I wasn't about to undergo surgery unless my life hung in the balance. What does one do these days if confronted by a doctor who is obviously of foreign origin? Run for your life? With this knee, I wouldn't make it to the door. "No surgery," I promised the cab driver.

"It could be from all that genuflecting in church when I was young," I thought to myself that night. All that bouncing up and down on one knee must have weakened the kneecap which had now disintegrated.

   "Were you an ever altar boy?" inquired a friend of mine.
   "No," I said. "They tried to recruit me but the thought of tripping over in front of the entire congregation and setting the church on fire with the incense put me off," I said.
   "A shame," said my friend indicating my knee. "If you had been, you could have sued the Pope for damages."