Oh!

There are some people who bruise so easily that they'll wake up in the morning after a peaceful sleep and find random black and blue marks on their bodies. Admittedly, sometimes that happens to me. I bruise so easily, though, that I could just take a step and get a bruise on my arm. Why this is, I don't know. But because of it, I have three hickeys now that aren't even hickeys. There are three little itchy bumps on my torso and thighs. If they are, as I suspect, bug bites, then bug bites are far itchier than mosquito bites. I've scratched them so much that I have hickey-wannabes there.

While showering for Shabbat, I couldn't help but think about how sometimes in our lives, things happen and we don't think twice about them. But then we grow up, look back, and realize that because of those seemingly insignificant episodes, we are who we are.

One day, when I was very little, I got ready to take a bath and discovered tons of purple dots on my thighs. I thought it was quite funny, but my mom was freaked out. She took me to the dermatologist and we were told that I must've put too much pressure on my thighs and made myself bruise. We figured it was because I used to go around the corner to Orchard Hills Park almost everyday after school and play paddle ball. (Mir did you and I ever play a game together?) While walking there and walking home, I used to just let the paddle swing back and forth against my legs. I'm pretty sure my mother made some form of a rule that I could only go if I held the paddle nicely against my side or cradled in my arms.

I didn't realize it at the time, but it must've been then, I think, that I was destined to be a dork.