duck-shaped pain

The end result of this was a bit of chilliness, and a lot of comments from other people -- even though an estimated 1 out of 4 people on campus was also wearing shorts today. Most of these comments were about my right leg. I have a big scar on it, running from my kneecap to halfway down my calf, a remnant from my injury two years ago (broken leg). Although I still feel the effects of the injury, I don't even notice the scar anymore. But it must be visible from at least a hundred feet away, because a lot of people said something about it.

P., this woman in my Western Civilization class, was the first to notice. She asked me if I had had reconstructive surgery on my knee, which prompted me to give the short, two-sentence version of what had actually happened.

She winced. Because she is an anthropology major, she began to tell me the anthropological viewpoint (her claim, not mine) of my injury:

"It's a good thing you broke it here in the last few years. Before, back in the olden days, breaking your leg was sort of a death sentence. It meant you couldn't move and that no one would help you and that the wolves would come and carry you off."

My public history midterm was today. It's actually the final written test, since class meets only twice after this week, both for oral presentations. I think I did okay, except for one question. We had to pretend that we were consultants hired by the local museum to make suggestions for raising more money and getting more visitors. When I got to this question, I had already been writing for an hour, and I was tired. I pounded out two sort of vague, nice-sounding suggestions, and then I sort of found my way to what I believe, looking back, was my main point: they need to improve their gift shop. It's a really crappy one, so it needs all the help it can get, but I think this means I'm a bad historian-to-be: we're supposed to be opposed to the ideals espoused by the gift shop. But it's a relatively painless, effort-free way to raise money, and it gets people in the door of the museum, or so I tried to explain. We'll see how well that goes over.

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