“I had always wondered how it would feel to have a girlfriend—to know that a certain girl liked me and that I liked her, too. But every time I tried to date a girl, something would go wrong. And now there I was, twenty-five years old, and I had still never had a girlfriend.”

Sundquist explains the predicament that led him to conduct his investigation: being 25 years old and never having had a girlfriend. The impersonal phrase, “something would go wrong,” indicates that at this stage, Sundquist thinks that his failures in dating result from a streak of bad luck rather than his own behavior. His idea that a girlfriend is someone who definitely likes him underscores his insecurity that he may not be worthy of being liked.

“Even with my crutches, I wasn’t an especially useful teammate in capture the flag—I couldn’t really hold the flag and move it at the same time. But at least on crutches I could run around to make it look like I was participating. The participation would be fake, but what did it matter when the alternative was wearing, you know, a fake leg? That’s what it means to be an amputee: You’re always putting on a show.” 

In a passage describing his attempt to participate in a game, Sundquist shows how isolated he feels from other kids of his age. He is alone in his management of his disability, in addition to his orchestration of a show of participation. The repetition of “fake” to describe his leg and his participation indicates his sense of imposter syndrome and inferiority to his peers without disabilities.

“When you’re faced with a significantly life-altering negative situation you can’t control, you grasp at the little things you can control. The little opportunities where you can make choices for yourself. I couldn’t choose to get my leg back, no, but I could choose to ask my youth pastor about the schedule without telling him my hip-disarticulated leg was the reason I was asking.” 

Sundquist explains that his attempts to control little aspects of his life are an after-effect of the overwhelming situation that was out of his control—the loss of his leg. However, he is alone in his mission to control everything, as his wish to not focus on his leg prevents him from explaining his reasoning to others.