Monday Memories: Soccer Star Part 2

I almost forgot it was Monday. Whoops. :P

You can read Part 1 here.

So, I returned to school unable to bend my knee. I went to a Catholic school for junior high, so no one could see that my knee was wrapped in ace bandages under my uniform pants.
At first, there was a certain amount of concern that I couldn't bend my knee, especially since this was during my life's very first venture into the realm of "popularity". I had lots of friends -- or thought I did -- and everyone seemed very concerned with why I couldn't bend my knee.

Which, of course, was something I didn't know. I told them that I was seeing lots of doctors, but that I didn't know what the problem was.
"How can you not know what's wrong with your knee?" The idea was absurd to most of the people I went to school with, so most of the students began to believe that I was faking or exaggerating.

Now, we had split lockers and my locker was on the lower half. Of course, this meant I couldn't go to my locker at all, let alone between classes. My teachers allowed me to carry more with me than the other students were. I was also permitted to leave classes early and arrive late. Most of my teachers were very accomodating.
My science teacher was not so kind. She would not let me leave class early, and would not let me bring my bag into the classroom as it was "too large and presented a fire hazard". I can see how she was worried about fire, with all that documentary watching we did, and all those times she read out of the book to answer all our questions. It's alright though, I accidentally got her back.

In order to use my locker I had to sit on the ground with my leg lying out across the hall. The other students had gotten used to this: when I had science, I needed to empty my bag into my locker. After science, I had to get my stuff out of my locker again. Twice a day, you had to use only half of that section of the hall. No one really had a problem with it (although most students would say things like "Would you stop faking that and take up less space?" as they walked past.)
One day, as the halls were clearing up, my science teacher was coming back from the bathroom. She, not noticing my leg, kept walking down the center of the hall. I told her to watch where she was going, but what did I know? I was only a student. She kept going.
She tripped on my knee. I shrieked in pain, she fell, and she yelled at me for tripping her. This was probably the first time I ever gave attitude to a teacher, but I snapped, "If you would watch where you were going instead of walking on the crippled kids, you'd be in class by now." Then, she had the nerve to tell me I was late for class and that I should get inside. I told her I was going to the nurse for painkillers and if she was so concerned she could take my notes for me until I got back. That didn't go over well, but the fact that I was nearly crying from pain and that much was obvious, kept her from giving me a detention.

Of course, that got her to shut up. It was still the students I had to worry about. At the time, and probably to this day, there was no elevator in this school, but the junior high was in the basement. I had the extremely difficult task of going up and down those stairs several times each day. And every time, there were people stuck behind me, because people would be going in the opposite direction and blocking the other side of the stairs. Obviously, this increased the number of pointedly mean comments made towards me.
The worst ones, of course, were from the time my knee buckled on the stairs. I had stupidly not worn my ace bandages that day and, on
the way downstairs from lunch, someone shoved my shoulder. Not too harshly, in fact it might have been entirely accidental (doubtful, but still). My knee crumbled under me and I fell down the remaining steps. Somehow, I wasn't hurt anymore than I already had been, although I was absolutely in a hysterical fit because it hurt so much.
"That's the fastest you've gone down the stairs in such a long time," one person sneered.
"Why can't you do that every time?" another kid shot at me.
Everyone walked past except one of my few remaining friends, who helped me to stand up.

Once a month our school had what we called a "tag day", you could pay them a dollar and they would let you wear your own clothes that day instead of the uniform. (There was a reason we called them Our Lady of Perpetual Fundraising.) During the time I was injured, we had one tag day. It was a warm day so I wore a t-shirt and shorts -- shorts which nicely showed off the ace bandages I was smart enough to wear forever after that.
Popular opinion, it seemed, was that I was wearing the ace bandages as a "costume" of sorts to keep up my "charade" of an injury. There was some difference of opinion though.
Even the teachers, apparently, had begun to doubt my injury, as I heard one teacher saying to another as I passed her classroom, "Well, he's wearing ace bandages today so maybe he really is hurt."
As I'd been developing somewhat of a backbone from this experience, I stopped and told her "You'd be able to see them every day if it wasn't against the uniform policy." I kept walking.

One of the more dramatic experiences happened in French class. Yes, I know I speak Italian, not French. In fact, this is part of the reason for that. They made us try each of the three languages. We took French, Spanish, and Italian while we were in junior high. I nearly failed in Spanish every time there was a grade, I rocked at Italian without even really trying, and I had a pretty good handle on French.
In this particular French class, I don't recall what exactly happened to start the fight, but a friend of mine who I was sitting next to said something about someone else, I jumped to the someone else's defense...the next thing I (or the rest of the class knows) we're in a full blown argument. (Probably my fault, I was very much on edge and ready to fight the entire two months of my injury.) She made some comment about me, I said something to her that really pushed her buttons, and she kicked me in my bad knee.
At this point our teacher shouted at us to take our seats.
We did -- and in my rage I forgot to keep my knee still and I bent it. This, on top of the pain from being kicked, reduced me to shrieks and sobs. In a panic, my teacher rushed over -- partially filled out detention slips in hand -- and I gasped "my knee".
She immediately handed my friend and I our detention slips and sent us both to the principal's office, which was also were the nurse was located.
My friend and I made amends on the way up to the office. She confessed she'd completely forgotten about my knee injury, and if she'd remembered she would have punched me in the face instead (which was, oddly enough, very comforting.)
We also noticed that the detention slips weren't completed. She hadn't signed them, or written our names on them. She also had forgotten to tear off a copy for her and had given us all of the pages of carbon copy paper, plus the original. Needless to say, we did not attend any detentions for the incident.
My friend and I actually used our ridiculously over-the-top fight as a bonding experience. She began to defend me when other people talked about my "fake" knee injury -- as she now knew first hand that I wasn't faking. I also had told her about how I had gotten it. After that, school with the injury became much easier.

As school went on, doctors were still perplexed. One doctor suggested that the injury was solely in my head. As I told my mother, "I would have kicked him in the balls if I could use my leg." She agreed. Not only did we not ever go back to see this doctor, to this day we still tell everyone we know never to see him, and I occassionally still hope he loses his license or gets sued for malpractice.
The final doctor that we saw was the one to discover something unusual about me: I seem to have an immunity to novacaine. Let me tell you, of all the drugs to not get results from this is the worst. She developed this theory that I had fluid in my knee. First, she gave me a shot of novacaine in my right knee (the bad one). Not a little, dental shot either. Like, a big shot.
Three minutes later I could still feel my knee. So, she put in another shot, the same size.
Six (or so) shots later, I could still feel my knee. She gave up.
"We'll just try to take the fluid out anyways," she decided.
I don't know how many of you have ever had this fluid-removal thing done to you, but let me just tell you...the needle is massive. And it's not thin either, because it needs to suck fluid into it. This is pretty painful without novacaine.
Especially if there's no fluid in your knee, which was the case with me. I don't know if I've ever screamed so loud in my life.
Utterly perplexed at the lack of fluid, she suggested that I begin physical therapy.
"We can still do tests and things, but in the meantime this will help you to actually get better."

Physical therapy cleared everything up with an amazing rapidity, which led those who still thought I was faking at school to "confirm" their beliefs. I was fine with that though -- I could finally go up and down stairs at a normal pace!

It would ultimately be Sports Illustrated that solved the mystery. My dad was reading an article in there that discussed a female athletes injury. She'd, very slightly, torn a ligament in her knee. Too slightly for it to be repaired surgically (or whatever they do). She immobilized her knee for two months and then began physical therapy, exactly what I had done. Her physical therapy had lasted as long as mine had. We were dumbfounded by the fact that we'd actually done exactly what we were supposed to.