My Narrow Escape from the Student Health Clinic.

I am fond of snow. I have a few problems with it, of course, as with anything in life. It's cold, or it's wet. Often it's both. That can be problematic for people like me. But never mind the problems. Let's move on to its merits.

1. It's pretty. It's pretty all by itself, and almost everything else is prettier when covered with it.
2. It's soft. Falling into snow is more pleasant than falling into almost any other naturally occurring substance, excepting perhaps warm water on the occasion that one is not wearing many layers of clothing, and naturally occurring deposits of down left by geese who have died of natural causes, though these are extremely rare.
3. It's cohesive, allowing one to make snowmen, snow angels, and snowballs.
4. It's slippery. Sledding, not to mention skiing and other types of sliding around in it are super fun.
5. I could really keep going for some time, but I won't because everybody knows that snow is awesome. Right.

In January, it snowed. I played football in the snow with some people, per the urging of a certain Doug Serven, who vehemently maintained that I wouldn't injure myself. Well, he doesn't know everything. I didn't injure myself, but the next day I woke up with one of my feet swollen to a ghastly degree with severe bruising and pain and a limited range of motion. And I don't think it had anything to do with my having gotten kicked really hard in the same ankle the night before while playing snow football.

I mean, it was fine. It healed right up. The only problem was as it healed, it didn't stop hurting, the swelling didn't go down, and I didn't regain my ability to move my toes.

So I decided to seek medical attention. This isn't really important; none of the story has been so far. Really it's all just a means of arriving at the important part of the story: the radiologist. I was at Goddard and I chatted with the doctor for a bit and predictably she sent me to have my foot shot with deadly radiation. And arriving in the x-ray room, the radiologist said: "Take off your shoe and sock and lie down on the table."

Needless to say, this statement made my day. As such, I exulted and explained just how happy she'd made me by not saying "lay down on the table." And she explained that she had learned as a youngster from a particularly caring and skillful grammar teacher that "you lay an object down. You lie on the x-ray table." Needless to say, we were friends by this point, and as such, she decided against killing me with radiation, though it may have cost her her job. Of course, not many people know that Goddard is really a front for a black market organ-harvesting ring that operates upon the principle that naïve college students go in thinking they will come out again. Instead of blasting me with microwaves like she was supposed to, she gave me an x-ray. Needless to say, I was very grateful. As such, I left.