Sunday morning, 10 a.m. You stumble out of bed, trip over the shoes that you refused to put away in your sloppy attempt to get into your ridiculously lofted bed without falling flat on your back and successfully make your way into and out of the bathroom. You make the lengthy trek to Frank and, after waiting for what seems like hours in the omelet line, sit down at the table. Your friend takes one look at you and says those three words that turn every weekend into an epic Scooby-Doo-esque adventure:

“What is that?!”

Yes, that’s right. Your friend spotted the handprint-shaped bruise on your arm before you did. Immedi­ately, you’re retracing your steps and thinking, “Well, that’s weird, because I don’t remember anyone beat­ing me senseless last night. Oh wait, who was that guy at the Jug who got a little feisty on the dance floor? And why is there a mark on my hand from Nichols? I never go there … and while we’re at it, where did this massive scratch on my arm come from?”

That one comment has now sent you spiral­ing downward into the dark abyss that was your Saturday night.

Everyone can relate to this because, let’s be hon­est, sometimes we all just need to get a little aggres­sive. But it never stops at just the bruises. I’ve encoun­tered some pretty funky injuries from the nightly escapades of my fellow classmates. I’m not just talking about people falling off of tables at frats and break­ing their legs (I mean, we all know that happens, too), but sometimes you see someone the morning after and all you can do is wonder what the hell they did last night and why your nights can’t be as eventful as theirs. So, example time: There’s the ever-popular painful hickey that practically screams, “I let someone with a mouth like a vacuum cleaner try to suck the jugular out of my neck last night.”

Now those are, unfortunately, pretty standard and they’re just plain funny. But they can also be covered up easily, so that’s considered relatively tame and mildly shameless on the list of potential injuries. Next comes the swollen lip. This could come from a variety of sources: an aggressive hookup, bottles to the face, you know, the usual accoutrements of a night that can only be summed up with the words “hot mess.” This particular battle wound is a little more laugh-worthy because, not only can you really not stop anyone from seeing that your lip is roughly three times its normal size, it also prevents you from eating or drinking properly for about a week. In other words, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. (And sometimes your friends want to take pictures of it to “document the shame,” but that’s a story for another day).

When you think about it, though, those injuries really aren’t anything to write home about. It’s the more, shall we say, exotic contusions that are particularly noteworthy. People don’t usually consider a bug bite to be an injury, but then again, those people have probably never woken up to find themselves covered in mosquito bites and ended up with scars from them.

As gross as it seems, those bugs are vicious. There are probably some days when you wake up with rug burn in places that you didn’t know existed, or you find a massive cut on your knee from when you full-on face planted on Broad Street in front of a porch overflowing with Keystone-laden frat guys. Maybe you get out of bed only to realize that you’re miss­ing a toenail. Granted, those aren’t really necessary to perform essential human functions, but it’s probably still pretty alarming to learn that the Jug has taken a piece of you for itself (other than your jacket or your dignity) and never plans on returning it.

We need to face the facts: these injuries are com­monplace. The fact that this is only a concentrated list of the injuries I’ve witnessed and sustained only goes to show that, in the simplest terms, maybe we need to take it easy. We all wake up the next morning with so many stories to tell about our friends’ and our own nights, but maybe it’s time to relax a little bit. I know that’s hard to do when the drinks just look so colorful and that beer-soaked table looks like the perfect stage to display your killer dance moves, but is the story or the injury really worth it in the end?

Who am I kidding? It totally is. Keep on falling, guys.

Contact Sara Steinfeld at [email protected].