It didn’t take much. It hurt less than I thought it would. The most surprising thing was how it just didn’t work anymore. I heard it pop and then it buckled and I was a heap of straw on the field. It just wouldn’t hold my weight. Not because I couldn’t take the pain. Not because I was not willing to make it work. It just didn’t. So ends my soccer playing days… for a while at least. So also ends my hiking and backpacking and golf-playing and dog-walking days. The doctor says it’s my ACL that I tore. But that’s all that I tore. I didn’t even tear my good mood that day. Everyone has words of condolence for me. Everyone tells me how sorry they are and make their faces fall with expressions of sympathy. I feel like there is something I’m missing. I’m not sad. I’m broken, but it’s fixable. It’s not a loss. It’s something that happened that could not be foreseen and thence avoided. It just is. And that’s all. And more than anything I’m curious about this new little twist in my fate. Now the plans for my summer will change and I wonder what happens next.

My eldest sister, acting no doubt with a combination of sympathy for my impending boredom, and opportunism for my lack of recreational mobility, has signed a contract to begin construction on a garage in the back yard. I am so psyched to pull on the Carharts again (even if I’ll have to be wearing a knee brace over them). Not only am I anxious to get my hands dirty again, but also I anxiously anticipate the end result. This 3-½-car monster will eventually house my wood shop. Little visions of projects are dancing (cartoon-like, with smiley faces) through my noodle.