No, a Fence

“Cross country is more fun,” I explained to Mike at track practice one day. “But track is safer. One time in a cross country race…”

“What?” he asked. “Did you run into a tree?”

“No, a fence.”

Mike was confused for a few seconds before he got it. “Oh, a fence! I was wondering what you could have run into that would offend me!”

It is true that I sometimes have a lack of depth perception. My sophomore year of high school I was running in a race that was at a campground and turned a corner too tight, ramming half my body into a fence. I was fine, I didn’t fall or anything, but it was a little bit embarrassing.

A couple years later, though, I ran into another fence. We met for cross country practice on the steps behind the gym. We then ran around the tennis courts and onto the street. There was a gate next to the tennis court, but about three feet of space between that gate and the fence surrounding the tennis court made it easy to get through.

Unless the person trying to get through is me. We set off on our run and I apparently misjudged how far I was away from the small gate and ran into it. My shorts got caught on the fence, so they now had a huge hole on the left side. It hurt a little bit, but I just laughed it off and kept running with my friends.

After about a mile of running I looked down and saw blood through the hole in my shorts.

“Oh my gosh, you guys! Look, I’m bleeding!” But I kept running, of course. No need to stop, it was just a little scrape.

After another half-mile the whole team stopped at the park for further instruction from Morris, our coach. Morris was standing facing most of the team, and a couple other girls and I were standing behind him.

“Oh my god! Look at Abby!” Ryan pointed and yelled in the middle of Morris’s talk. Everyone looked. And I actually looked at it for the first time. Not only were my shorts ripped and my leg bleeding, but the cut was a couple inches deep.

“Ooh, you’re going to need stitches on that,” Morris said after brief examination.

I finished the workout with blood running down my leg, then returned to school and examined the gate, which had a huge bolt sticking out the side that I had run into.  I went into the gym and asked the volleyball coach for a first-aid kit. She helped me fix my leg up with some butterfly bandages and I was once again told that I should probably get stitches.

But there was a race the next day. If I got stitches, I wouldn’t be able to compete.

So the next day, instead of getting stitches, I went to the cross country meet (which just happened to be at the same campground where I had run into a fence two years prior) with butterfly bandages, gauze, a huge band-aid, and medical tape all over my left leg.

I ran the race and didn’t run into anything. I later told a friend that I “don’t believe in stitches.” While that’s not true, I do think that because I didn’t get stitches, I have a much cooler scar.

After the attack!  Thanks for the picture, Holly!