So, I did something kind of dumb today. It was a small oversight, but I left my shirt at the pitch after practice today. I promise, it's not really that strange. As you all may have noticed, it rained a lot today - not only was it fairly consistently wet from the afternoon on, but the weather seemed to enjoy turning it up... whenever I was outside. Between outside bio lab and rugby, I was soaked through by the end of practice.
Luckily, I brought other clothes to change into after practice, because I had to hit dinner really fast before heading to my weekly TLI (Teaching-Learning Initiative) reflection meeting. In order to not sit around for hours with my soaking shirt, I took it off and put on the long-sleeved polo and light jacket I brought. ...And between getting my cleats off & knocking the mud off them, putting my mouthguard away and hopping into a friend's car for a ride to dinner (to maximize my time to eat before the meeting... and let's face it, I've been feeling a little entitled this year to rides back from practice when they're available, since I already walk back and forth from Brecon every day...), I left my t-shirt at the pitch.
I mean, whatever - it's only a t-shirt, right? But it's one I actually just got the other weekend at the Keystone tournament - where we took second to Penn and played phenomenally, 15 as 1 -- something we've been struggling with all year. So... I don't know, somehow it already has sentimental value or something. (Plus, it's a navy blue shirt with white writing - for some reason, my favorite combination ever. Oh, and it has a griffin on it, which is apparently the Keystone club's thing. A freaking griffin! Yeah... so, um, it's special.)
So when I realized that something soaking wet and navy blue was missing from my practice bag, I wasn't happy. I was already at dinner, and I had to run to the meeting... so I thought I'd get it afterward, when I finally went back to Brecon.
And then, at the meeting I was basically falling asleep, after running constantly all day (Oh, Wednesdays... how I hate thou), and then I was freezing on the walk back to Brecon and couldn't bear the thought of walking further than I had to before taking a nice hot shower. And then I laid down on my bed, "for 20 minutes, I swear" ... and woke up almost 2 hours later. Yeeeeah, I'm a champ sometimes.
But there was still my shirt - it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up, and I just didn't want to leave it there until Friday. I couldn't say for sure that one of my teammates grabbed it, or that someone else wouldn't between now and then. I've been careless with possessions before and I've tried to learn from those mistakes. So even though it was somehow almost midnight by the time I got it together and decided I was going out, I had to go through with it. I would really not be able to forgive myself for making the same mistake again.
So, to finally get to the other half of the title of this post (incidentally, I'm really sorry that I ramble and that our professor has asked us to read everyone's blogs in their entirety before our presentations next week... I didn't even think of your having to suffer through all of these as I was writing them. If it's any consolation, I promise you can probably skim mine and not miss anything important. Really. Ugh.)... Yeah - the walk. It's midnight. I'm leaving my room... looking a little bizarre, I have to admit, pajama flannel pants and bright yellow rain boots complementing the outfit.
As I walked, I had time to think. It's not often that you're alone in the dark on a college campus - I think I've grown accustomed to being surrounded by people and lights. And as I walked, I realized that I was probably actually doing a dumber thing by being out at that hour than leaving my shirt in the first place. I mean, I had to think kind of hard about it - but I think that might have been actually a little bit dangerous? I mean, who's out there at that hour? (Besides sort-of-sketchy college students retrieving rugby tournament t-shirts, of course.) And I also wasn't quite on campus any more (I mean, the GSSW is right around the corner, mostly - but still), something I didn't even think of until I was staring at the heavily wooded area that surrounds the pitch.
An axe murderer with a chainsaw could have jumped out at that moment, chopped me into little bits and put them in the creek... and who would have known? (Question: if he/she - not being sexist, please, women can be crazed killers too - has a chainsaw and not an axe, is she/he then "a chainsaw murderer? Doesn't have the same ring, somehow...) Clearly this did not happen, as I'm back in my room writing this.
But what disturbs me even more is that even though I came up with some crazy scenarios... I wasn't particularly disturbed by them at the time.
I'm 20 years old. That makes me invincible, right?
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