When I was a junior in college, the school decided to have a departmental woman soccer match and Hua and I signed on. Having never played soccer in my previous life, like many other players, I could only awkwardly maneuver the ball with right foot and kick it with the very tip of my big toe. After a week of unsuccessful training, we entered the match excitedly without much sense of its rules. The first a few days passed with fun. We ran around the field, yelling for attention of getting the ball, chasing after it like a mass of bees after an intruder and crowding around where the ball was being stopped, shoving each other to fight for a kick of it. Our department team played well and went up for the final, at the meanwhile, our toes became hurt so much that it made us cripple on the field most of the time during the games. Our last game was one day after lunch as most of the students were taking their nap. We limped to the field and scattered among the players of the other team. There were no scores until the second half of the game when one of our players aggressively pushed one of our counterparts to the ground to prevent her from getting a goal. A free kick was carried out and it goaled. When they were happily cheering, a student from my department passed by, for whatever reasons, counting the number of the players and finding that the other team had twelve players in the game, one more than allowed. At this point, the referee claimed their failure of following the rule and the winning of our department team. As a consequence of the match, my right big toe became purple, then blue, then black and then eventually died. It took two years for the new nail to grow out.
