Karma
I am generally a fairly good and honest person. I try to do right by people and (mostly) tell the truth. My most painful moment was caused from the one and only time I've ever pulled a sickie off work and how it came back to bite me.

I was on a gap year between school and uni and was working for a pretty boring company in Croydon (exotic use of a gap year, huh?). My friends and I decided to all collectively pull a sickie on a Friday and spend the day doing as much as we could. We had planned off-road mountain biking, golf and an epic piss-up. I never made it past the mountain biking.

One friend had a proper bike with fancy suspension and all sorts, the other two of us just had fairly plain mountain bikes. After a bit of a gentle warm up around a few tracks the two of us with the simple bikes were encouraged to have a go on a dual descender course and have a race. We started off neck and neck going up and down over the hills. Then I started to edge ahead and was boldened by the feeling of speed and leaving the gournd slightly over the hills. I started to properly sprint. This is where things went wrong.

I launched myself over the top of a jump and got so much 'air' (as the kids say) that I cleared the plateau at the top of the hill and landed on the downslope on the other side. The problem was when I hit the ground the handlebar sheared clean off on one side, sending me over the top of the bike and off down the steepest and most gravelly section of the course. As I slid down on my side, removing a fair amount of exposed skin as I went, I though I was never going to stop. When I finally came to a halt I sort of sat up a bit shocked only then to have the bike which had been bouncing down the hill after me crack me right in the back of my head.

Thanks to my friends who picked me and my bike up and to my sister who did a creditable job at patching me up. I'm told I looked quite white and shaky and they were worried I was going to be sick in the car. I don't remember a lot of that day. I had to tell work on the Monday that I felt a lot better on the Sunday and that's where I picked up my injuries as I limped around the office.

I've never pulled a sickie again.
(bigjonnydynamite, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 0:38, Reply)