Imagine walking home at the age of 13 after hanging out with your friends at the local skate park; just another day, living the life. Only tonight is different. On this night three older, menacing teenagers attack you, snatching your skateboards and emptying your pockets of any loose change. But there are three of them and five of you. Surely, this is a battle you can win.
      Suddenly, punches are being thrown, and in all of this one of the 19-year-olds decides to play dirty: in one ineptly executed move, you manage to get stabbed. The teenagers flee as your friends whip out their phones, calling parents and police alike, as your shirt becomes stained with your own blood. You’re eventually stitched up, good as new, and equipped with a story that will stay with you forever.
      Now, instead imagine you got appendicitis at age eight. Your appendix had to be removed while you still lived in Bolivia, before they had the technology to decrease the appearance of scars. One day, someone asked you about the scar and seeing it as having an obvious answer, you gave them a ridiculous explanation.
      “I just thought it was obvious what the scar was from,” said junior Chris Weniger.
      That was how the rumor of Chris Weniger’s scar began. The words flowed from his own mouth, with such precise descriptions and explanations that it seemed nothing but true … which is partly because it is.
      “My friends and I really did get mugged – that part actually happened but I was never stabbed,” Weniger said. “We never thought we could take them either.”
      The two stories were combined when someone asked him where his scar had come from. From there, it travelled throughout the school and became widely accepted as the truth. Even some of Weniger’s closer friends had no clue the stabbing never actually happened.
      “I found out about a year ago that it wasn’t true,” said junior John Crune.
       Even after learning the truth, people haven’t seemed to be terribly upset about the exploited rumor. Weniger’s explanation of “obvious questions get sarcastic answers” adds a twist of humor to the entire ordeal. No one holds the exaggeration against him as he wasn’t looking for any sort of attention or awe.
     “I was surprised that it wasn’t true,” said junior Alissa Allison. “It was just so easy to believe it and move on to the next topic, especially since he has the scar.”
     While having appendicitis is a truly unfortunate event, the humor Weniger put behind the explanation of the scar may have made the experience worthwhile. Most importantly, he wasn’t telling the twisted tale to make others perceive him in a different light. It is vital that students not get caught up in every rumor floating down the halls as it has become more than evident that not all of them are true.
      Although high school is always going to be engulfed in a sea of rumors, incidents like these are a true message in a bottle – exquisitely rare and more than worthwhile to break open. It’s just a matter of not getting stabbed by the remaining shards.