A Note On Why Running Can Be Bad for Your Knees.

I am a klutz. There is little other way to describe my falls, bumps, scrapes and the multiple random nicks, bruises and an assortment of minor injuries that follow, usually with me going “Where’d that bruise come from?” or “When did I get that?” Normally I’m the one who gets bruised, but there are times like when I put a hole in Kyle Richard-Garrison’s finger with an electric drill. I did not realize the true extent of my clumsiness until I got to high school. But it was also high school that taught me that my ridiculous disasters are not always to my disadvantage.

First day of class my sophomore year and Sarah and I, who I’d known for three years, had discussed hanging out at her house that afternoon. As classes ended, I thought it would be better if I went home that evening, and when the bell rang for class I dashed to the office to let her know that I would be taking the bus home. I got to the office, told her and I turned to run out of the office, down the hall, out the doors and across the parking lot to my bus.

It is at this point that I would like to explain that until I’d been in college a year I would find a special outfit to wear for the first day back; often I would shop for new clothes to wear. On this particular first day of school, I was wearing one of my favorite pairs of dark blue denim bell bottoms and a pair of four-and-a-half-inch platform mules (open heeled shoe).

In my mad dash to the bus, I missed a step and went crashing down. Thankfully, I managed to save my head from going into a corner of a row of baby blue lockers. I got up, brushed myself off, and ran down the hall, out the doors, down the stairs and suddenly found myself almost kissing asphalt. There I was again with the running thing. I made it to the bus and sat next to Jessie Fowler who I’d been flirting with since the sixth grade.

I had a large hole in the left knee of my jeans and my hands were stinging. I would not have called this a good day, but then Jessie was nice, told me to call him if I needed cheering up, which I decided I did – my jeans were ruined (I tried the “hole-y look” but it was no good). He walked to my house later and even though it was August we decided to go for a walk. It was my mother who inspired that choice – he was jumpy under her eyes and nose. Of course because it was August hot and the honeysuckle smelled good, we stopped in the shade, and then – even though it was hot – he was close and he gave me my first kiss.

It wasn’t a happily ever after, but I felt proud to be among the first of my friends to get their first kiss. Later I nearly slit my future boyfriend’s (though he is now my ex) wrist with a box cutter. My relationship with him was my first significant relationship. But Jon Roberts is an essay all on his own.