In college I took aikido classes. I had thin gi pants designed for taikwando, not grappling. With all the ground movement the knees ripped open constantly.

So each night after class I’d cut new squares out of an old white t-shirt, and then sew those squares onto the ripped-open knees of those gi pants.

My sewing technique was crude: just two pieces of cloth pressed together, then a doubled thread wrapping around that seam again and again and again. The seams were tough and thick, like scars on the pants.

Each class, they’d rip open again, and I’d add more path material and more thread. Eventually the knees were many layers of torn and patched cloth, with thick scarlike seams criss-crossing all across them. The inside of those knees were very rough and it was kneeling and crawling on that roughness that was tearing up my knees.

I didn’t have money for laundry either so every class I washed that gi in my tub and wrung it out as best I could to dry for two days until the next class.

I spent nearly as much time tending that gi as practicing on the mat. It felt cool. The skin of my knees grew thicker and more leathery as I tore it up and it healed repeatedly, matching the uniform’s knees getting thicker and gnarlier.

Every night after class first it was hydrogen peroxide for the blood (always blood in the knees after a class) then scrubbing that with a toothbrush, then churning the gi in the tub. The water would get murky and surprisingly dirty and then I’d pull the thing out of the tub a few inches at a time, wringing it as tight as I could to get the water out, then dropping the dry end on the bathroom floor and grabbing another couple inches to wring out. My forearms would be just dead, my hands wanting to cramp from all the gripping and twisting.

I miss being young.