I didn’t like my friend Jennifer much. I didn’t like that she did all the talking in a phone conversation, and I didn’t like that she was my best friend Glenda’s “other” best friend. I always felt like I was in some kind of tug of war with her, always trying for a bigger piece of the conversation pie, always trying for a bigger piece of Glenda’s attention. Little did I know that I would ever get burned in such a tug of war.

One weekend, my friends and I went to a block party and decided to participate in some of the party games. We entered a dance contest and bought some raffle tickets, and we teamed up to play an actual tug of war.

So there I was holding the rope in a line of my friends. Our opponents were a bunch of neighborhood boys, and we were determined not to lose to them. Jennifer took her place in front of me, and we all began to tug.

I still remember the thickness of the rope and the haphazard way I held on to it. Somehow I had managed to get my index finger above it, on the same side as my thumb, instead of below it, on the same side with the rest of my fingers.

And somehow Jennifer managed to hold the rope just a little above where my own hands held it.

We all pulled and pulled, gripping with all our might and putting all our weight into it in our attempt to win. I could feel a little bit of friction as the rope slipped a little beneath my hands, so I held on tighter and pulled. So did the others. So did Jennifer.

Only, she had her hands over mine, which meant that my index finger was between her hands and the rope.

More gripping. More pulling. Lots of grunting. Lots of rope slipping from our fingers, burning our skin. I’m almost certain that everyone on our team wanted to let go and lose gracefully. I know I did. I wanted to let go of the rope and forget the whole game. You’ve got to hand it to Jennifer, though. She was determined to win, and she held on to that rope as though her life depended on it, and she pulled and pulled.

Easy for her to do. She still had her hands over mine.

So there I was feeling the burn of the rope as it slipped through my fingers and wanting desperately to let go, and there she was blithely holding on, trapping my own hands and not feeling the burn at all because she was using my hands as her gloves.

I was too much in pain and in panic to tell her, “Let go of my hands, girl, you’re killing me!” The best I could do was, “Aaaauuuugggghhhh!!!!”

Burn, burn, stinging burn. I was about ready to kick her, I was so desperate, but I figured if I continued to pull, we could win and get this whole thing over with. It didn’t help. She only held on tighter as the rope continued to slip between my burning fingers, and I was trapped for good. We were losing, and it seemed like ages before we all finally let it go.

I was never so relieved to give up and lose!

Jennifer seemed really proud of herself though for all the effort she made. Me, I was staring at my index finger, where a great big giant chunk of flesh was gouged out from one side of it. Gouged out! At least half an inch wide, burned away by the once slipping rope. It was sickly pale at first, so ghostly white that it was scary. Then red spots began to form quickly-growing pinpricks against the white, and the whole thing became pink, then red with blood. I gaped at it as it went from numb to mind-numbingly painful, and somehow I managed not to faint, and I asked someone for a bandage of some sort.

I showed all of my friends the damage, but Jennifer didn’t seem to feel any responsibility or remorse—at least, not enough for my taste. I spent the rest of the day feeling bitterness and resentment over the whole thing, along with the pain. And I continued to feel bitterness and resentment over the years as I continued to lose Glenda to her.

To this day I still have the scar, a white pucker of flesh on the side of my right index finger. If you run your finger against it, you can even feel a slight bump along the skin.

I’m kind of glad I have it though. It still reminds me of Jennifer, who died very young from cancer and left a painful gouge in Glenda’s loving, mourning heart. It also reminds me not to get into petty tugs of war with my friends over conversations and the attention of other friends.

Or into block party tugs of war, for that matter.

But you already knew that.

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