flashback: freshman year, week four
In the dorms, I was desperately self-conscious. More than your average nervous newbie, I was trying too hard to get to know everyone and consequently, get all my dormmates to like me. Of course, like every person who forces social interaction, I failed.

Last week, I met not one-- but two-- people from my freshman dorm who are still on campus. With one, I had the basic "hey how are you, oh, that's nice, take it easy" conversation. With the other, I had a bit more of a walk down memory lane.

I still feel terrible about what happened. How's your knee? Can you use it?

The accident occurred less than halfway into Fall term 2000. Justin was, at that point, coming down to see me in the dorms almost every weekend and I was still convinced that no one liked me, in part because my boyfriend came to stay with me. We decided to stage a game, on of Justin's favorite, out on the large rolling east lawn (the Humpy Lumpy).

So we got most of the guy's floor and most of the girl's floor together for a game of Clench a Wench. Now, if you don't know what Clench a Wench is, here's a brief summary:

Picture a large circle, like duck-duck-goose, with male and female participants seated alternately. From a list of names, someone calls out a person to sit in the center and another person, of the same gender, to guard them. Then, finally, a third person of the opposite gender is summoned as the offense. That third person must break from the outside of the circle and get to the person in the center-- in order to KISS them, anywhere-- without being tackled, taken down, and kissed by the defense.

This is DEFINITELY a contact sport. A very fun one, at that, but not a game unfamiliar with injury. Bruises, grass burn, bloody noses, torn shirts. These are clench-a-wench battlescars.

You see where I'm going with this.

We'd played for only twenty minutes or so when one of the guys, Andy, an avid karate student took down Sam, a petit, demure girl, with a body drop. And shattered her knee.

Though he felt terrible, most of the resentment seemed to be directed at me, as the coordinator of the event-- and I never really lived it down. At first, Sam seemed pretty pissed about the hospital and ambulance bill (why they didn't drive her, I was never sure). Then, it became obvious that her knee was not getting much better. A doctor told her that she would never run again.

When I saw her last week, she was at the gym on a treadmill. I immediately noticed the scars above her right kneecap. She told me she had surgery the summer after sophomore year. At that point, she'd been advised permanently against even walking up stairs. But now, she said, she could even run on it.

I wanted her to tell me it wasn't my fault but instead she withdrew slightly and said, "It might seem like yesterday, but it was a long time ago." I felt bad for even bringing it up because she's right, sometimes the past should stay in the past.

Nevertheless, I'm glad to be where I am now, and not where I was then. We all bear our own battle scars.