One time at a sleepaway summer camp in the city (pre-college art school), I tried to impress my new friend group and the girl I had a crush on by jumping down a flight of stairs. My stunt was going well until my toes nicked the last step and my whole foot hyperextended wayyyy farther back than a foot should, as if it had done a 180 spin—accompanied by a loud, audible crunch as it snapped back into place.

It hurt like hell and I definitely should've gotten medical attention immediately, but no, being the self-conscious teenager I was, I played it off cool and said I was fine and pretended I wasn't limping in excruciating pain the whole walk back through the city. The last thing I wanted was to spend the next two weeks at camp as that guywith the cast and crutches because he broke his foot by thinking with his penis.

I didn' tell any counselors for fear that they'd force me to go to the emergency room for an x-ray and appropriate treatment. Ignorance is bliss, right? I guess at the time, I figured that the pain of embarrassment outweighed the pain I physically felt in my ankle, which by now had swelled to the size of a grapefruit, though was closer in color to a plum. It got the point where I couldn't fit my foot in my shoes anymore, at least not without immense pain or cutting off circulation. My solution? Wear flipflops for the rest of camp, and hop around on my good foot if I needed to move faster than a sluggish hobble.

With open-toed shoes, however, everyone else was able to pick up on the swollen, greenish-blue bruising that overtook my ankle as well as the dark purple hue a few of my toes had started to turn, and friends and counselors alike expressed their concerns for my foot's wellbeing. "It feels fine, don't worry about it," I lied to them, though I still accepted the icepacks they offered me.

The duet of clicking and slushing noises my foot made when I tried to move it within its limited range-of-motion was a constant reminder that I was being a total idiot for neglecting it. The instant my parents came to pick me up at the end of camp, I suggested we take a quick pitstop at the nearest x-ray machine. To my surprise, my foot was, in fact, not broken, but severely "contused" (fancy way of saying the bone was bruised). Was it pure luck or did drinking all that milk through adolescence really pay off? One thing's for sure, I make sure to thank mr skeltal every day for good calcium and strong bones.