I came to in the emergency room, having no memory of how I'd ended up there with two broken teeth and a ripped bottom lip. A few days later, we'd find out I'd been hit by a reckless driver while riding my scooter to a friend's house, but even three months later, the last thing I remember is stopping by the grocery store to get a few bottles of wine (all of which survived the wreck, by the way).
My favorite bra, a favorite t-shirt, and a pair of underwear had been cut off of me. But for some reason, my jeans had been spared. They weren't even torn from their slide along the pavement. In fact, I have a scar on my knee from the fabric burn they left as my body scraped along the street. I was relieved - these weren't just any jeans. I'd found them for $6 in a thrift store and they had been the only pair to ever fit me perfectly, no alteration required. But I was dismayed when I picked them up and found them stained with asphalt, gasoline, and blood.
But I couldn't give up on these jeans, not the one and only pair that was neither too short nor too long, that fit my muscular thighs without being baggy in the waist. So I put them through the wash. Then I put them through the wash again. And again. And again. And eventually, most of the stains faded.
If you look closely, you can see a spot of asphalt that looks like an ink stain, gasoline that looks like spilled tea, blood that looks like dirt. But like the scar on my lip and the veneers on my teeth, you can't really tell unless you know what to look for. Like my face and my knee, they're altered forever because of one reckless person's bad decision. But they still fit me better than any jeans I've ever had. Just like the rest of me, they withstood a high-impact crash, survived, and came out okay in the end. I'm grateful every day that I lived through this, and it's icing on the cake that my jeans came with me.
(PS - Helmets save lives. If you ride, wear one.)
—Dorla Moorehouse
