It was a brisk September morning and the stream of students flowing to classes on campus was barely a trickle, just the way he liked it. He didn't like crowds. They made him nervous - correction - more nervous.

He was a tall, lanky kid of Indian descent. The small gold-framed glasses he wore gave him a studious look. The jet black hair that sat on his head like a double scoop of melted licorice ice cream didn't. He liked wearing white polo shirts under baggy blue sweaters. He also liked wearing pants that weren't two inches too short for his legs, but he didn't own any.

This was the third week of his freshman year in college and he was still trying to get a handle on things. His biggest problem had been getting to class on time. It wasn't a large school, but his schedule had conspired against him by placing his only back-to-back classes at opposite corners of campus.

He walked the first week and arrived to the second class five minutes late, drawing undesired attention to himself. He ran the second week and arrived on time, sweaty and out of breath, which only drew more undesired attention.

A friend suggested investing in a bicycle. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he purchased a secondhand beater advertised on a bulletin board in the student union.

Now, as he rode along the paved walkway, he was beginning to feel buyer's remorse. Actually, to say he rode is being too generous. The word suggests a certain steadiness of motion, a degree of control. What he was actually doing on the bike suggested nothing of the sort. For every intended foot of forward motion, there was an unintended inch or two of sideways motion. He didn't ride; he wobbled.

If the school newspaper kept track of such things, it might have described him as one of the best wobblers in university history. For all of his unpredictable maneuvering, he managed to stay on the bike, aided by the fact that his lower body acted like a giant paper clip. He also managed to keep the bike mostly upright with the help of some Shakira-caliber hip action.

What was most amazing, though, was that he never crashed into anybody. His wobbling was slow enough that people had time to jump out of the way, once they realized he was heading their way (a fact that wasn't necessarily apparent until the last horrifying second). It probably helped that he closed his eyes before every potential impact.

The wobbling was going surprisingly well until he reached a patch of grass next to the bike cage on the other side of campus. That's when it all went horribly wrong. As long as he had momentum, everything worked fine, but as soon as he slowed, it all went to weed.

The long legs that had clung so tightly to the beater couldn't untangle themselves fast enough as the bike began to topple. The hips that didn't lie tried to compensate, but there was no fighting gravity. The bicycle tipped ever so slowly and he gradually crashed to ground, hands still on the handles.

He laid there for a few seconds, blinking at the blades of grass in front of him, hoping to avoid any undesired attention, hoping no one noticed. For the most part, nobody did. People walked by without slowing or looking.

Only one guy stopped to help him up. The guy had noticed the wobbler as soon as he had come into view a few hundred feet away. Three weeks later, he would write a truth-inspired account about it all online for his own amusement.