Evolution Hurts

The following is a true story, one of many stories in my family of injuries with silly causes (my brother tore his ACL playing frisbee). The names have been changed so that the participants don't have this story pop up in Google under their real names.

Mrs. Klein, my AP Biology teacher, told us that, in order to simulate natural selection, we would play a game outside. Everyone would stand in a circle. In the middle was a pie plate with little slips of paper. The slips of paper represented food, and we were pretending to be mother bears. During each round, we had to run into the middle of the circle and grab enough food for our cubs and ourselves. Naturally, as the game progressed, there would be less food and the slower mama bears would die off, leaving just a few survivors.

I made it through the first round. But when the second round started, my friend Melanie, who was standing next to me, and I started running at the same time and managed to hit each other in the head. She walked away with a large bump on her forehead. I looked down at my shirt and saw blood. My glasses frames were crooked from the impact. Mrs. Klein told Melanie to take me to the girls' bathroom, help me wash my face, and bring me back out to the game.

If you've ever seen our high school bathrooms, or any public high school bathroom, you would know how ludicrous this idea sounded. The bathrooms often lacked soap and paper towels, but always had the trace of marijuana and cigarette smoke. So we went to the nurse's office. She found a small laceration half an inch away from my left eye and told me I would need stitches. Apparently, some of the metal in my glasses frames cut my face.

When the nurse called my mother, she said that I had been "in an altercation," which made my mom think that either a) someone had said/done something really nasty to me or b) something was wrong with me, because I am not the violent type. When she picked me up and saw Melanie and I laughing about our injuries, she was relieved but flabbergasted. We were in AP Bio and injured ourselves pretending to be bears?

After waiting an hour and a half at the doctor's office, I got three stitches and a rainbow-colored bruise had formed around my eye. Despite my brother's sentiment that I should photograph the bruise for posterity, we never did, which I actually regret because it adds a lot to the story. We also should have photographed my bent glasses; my mom and I had to take them to Lenscrafters to get the frames fixed. 

However, I did get to see Mrs. Klein's face when she found out about the incident. The day after, I showed up to class as usual, and showed her my eye. I wonder if she still uses the bear game in her Biology classes, or if she's changed her policy on sending bleeding students to the bathroom instead of to the nurse.