Last week, the Cheesemakers — my mighty intramural soccer team — stepped onto the field with big dreams for our first game. With a winless indoor campaign in the rearview mirror, we believed the green turf and fresh air could reverse our fortunes. And it did, at least for a few minutes. But then both the game and my knee took a very wrong turn, and half of the valiant, and still winless, Cheesemakers found themselves sitting in the emergency room.
My complicated relationship with my knee goes back to my senior year of high school. Just weeks away from graduation, I was playing in a baseball game when I collided with the opposing team’s first baseman and took my first stumble down a long path of consultations, MRIs, physical therapy and an seemingly eternal line of supportive braces. I had hoped this cycle had reached its conclusion when my ACL was surgically repaired last winter, but my body had other plans.
Given this unfortunate history, you probably expect the rest of the night to take on a fairly somber tone. After all, both my teammate Maggie and I had sustained injuries rendering us unable to walk without significant assistance. However, I’ll look back on my visit to the emergency room quite fondly, not because I particularly love hearing ominous beeping and whirring in the wee hours of the morning, but rather because my friends and I turned what could have been a dreadful night into a truly enjoyable experience.
Now discharged and hobbling around on crutches, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my hours in the hospital. The most memorable part of it was definitely the people. Three of our friends stayed with Maggie and me all the way until three in the morning. The five of us have known each other to various depths and for various lengths of time, but our emergency room adventure provided us with an experience that is impossible to replicate.
I’m a huge fan of forced bonding — the 36 questions that make you fall in love are my favorite — but it’s moments like that night that make me realize the best bonding can’t be planned; it occurs naturally and randomly.
As a self-proclaimed expert in long-distance friendships, I understand shared experience is the key to a successful relationship. These experiences are varied in nature, but at their root they all connect individuals, whether through happiness, sadness, pain or all three. They serve as a sort of collective memory pool from which each person may draw without fear of their counterpart not understanding, and that’s important. Essentially, they are the backbone of the relationship.
Though I was already pretty close with everyone who spent the night in the hospital with me, it still gave us an entirely new list of shared memories, ranging from making friends in the waiting room over pizza and March Madness to the sweetness of freeze pops at one in the morning. These special moments should not be taken for granted. As time slowly erodes the backbone of a relationship, it becomes easier and easier to just slide into an eternal game of catch-up.
Relationships take time and energy, and college students have limited quantities of both. As a budding economist, I know full well we will apply our time and energy relatively rationally to whatever we feel fulfills us the most. Unfortunately, this occasionally causes us to slowly drift apart from those we hold dear, sometimes without us even realizing it. Thankfully, experiences like the one I had in the emergency room can prevent exactly that from happening.
I learned a lot from my journey from the soccer field back to a hospital bed — especially that you should try to avoid knee injuries at all costs. More within your control, however, is your ability to always treasure the spontaneous situations presented before you. Though yours may not involve free freeze pops or friendly basketball enthusiasts, unplanned moments can greatly deepen your connection with another person, whether new or old.
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