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I recently joined a coed flag football league under the mistaken impression that a. I could play football and b. it would be a fun, non-life-threatening, bonding experience with my boyfriend. Now, I am a fairly athletic woman. During my college years I played lacrosse and somehow managed to regularly sprint up and down a field 100 yards long for sixty minutes. And I did this for fun. Now, ten years later, I still run regularly—only much slower and no one chases me with a stick—and recently completed my first half-marathon. I play tennis. Okay, fine, I hit the ball thirty feet in the air in the general direction of my opponent, but any of the surrounding courts are fair game, even if there are other players occupying it. Which most of the time there are. So when Jeff suggested joining the team as a way for me to be involved in his favorite activity, I agreed. How hard could football be?

There is a reason you don’t turn on ESPN on Sundays to watch the Bears play the Giants and see the quarterback throw a tight spiral into the end zone for a touchdown, only to take off her helmet and shake a long mane of blonde hair out, congratulating her teammates with a tight hug. Because girls and boys should not play football together. Or, at the very least, girls should not play football with boys who are approaching 40 at break-neck speed and slather on Bengay like a thin, greasy coat of armor, refusing to accept that their bodies neither look, nor move, like they did in their twenties.

“Are you sure no one will care that I don’t really know how to play?” I ask, throwing the ball with all my might, watching it wobble six feet in the air and then land well out of Jeff’s reach.

“Everyone’s really casual. We’re just here to have fun,” He assures me as the ref blows the whistle to signal game time.

Now, I have never actually been hit by a steamroller from behind, but as I am flying through the air watching the grass hurtle towards my face at lightning speed, I imagine that this moment would be quite similar.

Luckily my right hip broke my fall, as I fell back to earth with effortless grace. I lay on the ground in the fetal position, waiting for the wail of the ambulance siren and a flood of pity to rain down on top of me. I imagined that as they gently, mournfully hoisted me on to the stretcher I would manage to give them a weak smile, lifting my battered arm with a shaky thumbs up to let them know they could, nay must, go on without me. After minutes passed and no EMTs had come to administer CPR or a morphine drip, I opened one eye in time to see Jeff doing a victory dance over me, after having sacked the quarterback. And since the laws of physics precluded him running through me to get to the QB, he did the next best thing. He ran over top of me.

“You okay, hon?” He called over his shoulder as he jogged back to the huddle. A giant, purplish blue bruise was forming on my pride.

I smiled through gritted teeth, teeth that had very well almost been knocked out by his cleat. “Fine honey.”

I limped through the rest of the game, shooting him dirty looks at every opportunity, which he mistook as evidence of my intense focus and determination to win—which we did not. We settled for a heart-wrenching tie that came down to the final nail-biting moments. Or something like that.

Two skinned elbows, a skinned knee, three jammed fingers and a bruised hip later, we lay on the couch applying Bengay to every visible surface. I wondered how I would be able to go to work the next day.

“Did you have fun?” He asked, as I applied his heated back patch for him.

I felt the throbbing pain, pulsating through every extremity, saw the dirt caked around my ankles and the grass stains streaked across my shirt. But I also felt a flicker of nostalgia for those days long gone of wind sprints in the snow, your breath escaping you in short puffs like smoke signals from the fire raging in your lungs.

“Yeah, it was fun.” I felt grateful for those experiences, how they helped shape me into the adult I have become, by the lessons they taught me. The most important being, of course, the body’s immense capacity to heal.

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