I have never let the potential for the destruction of personal
clothing stop me from having any sort of fun. As it happens that is
not a universal help value and there was a girl who is still probably
mad at me about some grass stains. She was in my 'K' group and was
one of those girls who was cute enough but so very uptight and proper
that it ruined the whole vibe. She had actually lived in my small
town when she was very young and so we had formed a little bond based
on that fact of vaguely remembered childhood interactions. Which is
to say, I remembered her because she was a cute and popular girl and
she remembered me because I was a stinky nerd. The whole week I was
teasing her about how exactly pressed and finished her look was even
while we were playing outdoor games. She would just stay at a
distance that would keep her in the showroom perfection she worked so
hard to maintain. I thought maybe all she needed was some loosening
up and if she got tussled she would be like one of those button down
girls from the movies who realizes she is a wild child at heart. The
third day at camp when she was walking from her dorm to the classroom
where we met after breakfast she passed a group of about twenty kids
playing kissing tag and I decided to chase her down and tackle her
for a joke. I did, but in the process of tackling her to the grass
she got grass stains on her pants and lost her damn mind. She pushed
me away with the panicked strength of a mother protecting her young
and looked at her now minutely stained jeans knees and started yell,
scream, crying and called me all sorts of curses at the limit of
which her propriety would permit even in the depths of
hate-anger-rage. Sobbing she ran across the lawn back to her dorm. To
the casual observer it would look like I had broken her legs and then
tried to molest her, not playfully tried to tackle her to the ground.
Everyone looked at me and I felt like a worm that had to explain to
everyone that she was upset about grass stains and noting more
serious. I got glares and saw people whispering, I assumed about me.
We walked into class and the instructor asked where she was and
people told him that I had tackled her and she had run back to her
dorm. He looked worried and angry and after he got the class on task
he asked me to come with him to go find her. We ran into her on the
way to her dorm changed and clean and recovered from the worst of the
rage fit. The instructor stopped her and we all three talked about
what a monster I was for giving her grass stains on her pants. I was
at once contrite and also defensive. I was genuinely sorry for
hurting her feelings but on the other hand it was just some stupid
grass stains. She told us that she was worried about her pants and so
she had run back and got some pre-wash on them to see if they could
be saved. I apologized and time went on and by lunch everything was
back to normal. After the camp I saw her two years later and she was
still mad a bout the grass stained pants and mentioned that before we
even exchanged pleasantries and caught up. Even funnier is that my
mom ran into her 15 years after the camp at a conference and the girl
recognized her last name and told my mom that I had once tackled her
and gave her grass stains on her jeans. When my mom told me she had
run into the girl, now woman I guess, I asked if she mentioned grass
stains, my mom laughed and said that was the first thing she said
after she established that my mom was my mom. Some scars never fade.
