Old-skool pool gym tool uncool
As a 13 year-old, my weekday mornings would start at 4AM with porridge in the pre-dawn darkness, dressing in a pair of budgie smugglers and a tracksuit, and being driven to the aquatic centre for swimming training before then heading off to school. I was almost quite good too, but a bit more slow to develop than some of the more advanced specimens of bulged-lycra manliness (and indeed budding womanliness) about the place. Many days, we'd swim a little for a warm-up, towel off and head into the gym for a session and then head back into the water.

Back in time, exercise bikes used to have enormous flywheels with fan blades attached perpendicular to the direction of rotation, for resistance. The wheel was situated where a normal bicycle front wheel would be, but protected by a wire mesh cage, all welded together and industrial-like. The torque and momentum the wheel develops when you get a good clip up is awesome, and it's fun when it's time to dismount to just stand one-footed on a pedal as you swing your other lef off and let the slowing, but powerful motion of the flywheel lift you up and down a few times.

Of course, if you're doing this in bare feet...wet bare feet...and your foot slips inwards towards the crank or whatever it is you call the arm the pedal's attached to, which is sharp-edged metal, then as this metal makes contact with the puffy soft moist oh-so-tender skin at the inside edge of your heel it will tear your skin, and continue tearing a huge great frigging strip of it right off along your instep all the way to the end of your big toe, where it will dangle flappingly, as you stare down at it in fascinated horror....still slowly going up and down on the pedal, too dumbstruck to get off.

Here's the weird part though, it hardly hurt a bit. Everyone gathered round to go "ooh" and "ahh" because times were different then and you din't as a kid say "holy fucking shit check it out you can see like his *foot-fingerprint* pattern and shit on the muscles where the skin was!" in front of the coach. It kept not really hurting. My manliness points are climbing sky-high right now as I stand on it, walk about a bit with the big skin-flap, reach down, and just *tear it fucking off* like a real hard man. Ha.

Riding the crest of this wave of unexpected testicularity I decide to continue to impress the ladies (one in particular, and I never did...you know..because...) and carry on. The edges of the wound were really neat, adhered to the underlying layer, and there was no real blood seepage. The coach agrees that if I feel fine swimming with it then the chlorine would probably do it the world of good.

Finish gym stuff. Out to pool. Up on blocks. Puff meagre chest out imperceptibly of course. Prepare to do the thing I'm the very bestest at, my awesomely huge and powerful dive...

lets's go slo-mo underwater now...

and imagine if you will the feeling, as time grinds to a merciless pace just perfectly adjusted to bring the maximum possible horror, as the first odd sensation of the edge of the wound, out at the tip of my big toe, starts to separate in the rush of water. Eons pass as the water pushes ever further under the tender skin, insistently peeling back the pad of the toe. I know how to stop it, of course, stop the forward motion, but the force of the dive and - at the ball of the toe the same thing starts to happen; peeling, flaying, the edge has separated all the way back to the heel and the hideously palpable rush of eater over a fresh layer of flesh never meant to see the light of day let alone unspeakably chlorinated be-peed in pool water at high speed.

Fair dinkum, underwater I squealed like a little girl.

I ended up with the entire sole of my foot basically acting as an open bag attached at the tip of my toe, the edge of the ball of my foot, around the outside of the sole and back to the back of my heel. Tears do not show on a wet face, but pallid, shocking agony does.

The coach months later when I could return to the arduous regime of before-and-after-school training, but chose not to, was kind and comradely talked about how with that amount of training missed at my age it might take me years to catch up anyway. He knew I knew what he meant and that I knew it as well as he anyway - I was just no match for the early growth monsters, the hirsute 13 year old 6 foot 85 kilo giants with basso profundo voices and needing new Speedos every couple of months due to, well, growth.

It healed just fine.

EDIT: oh yes, and I have also sliced my penis open in a hang gliding accident involving a barbed wire fence, but other than the details, it's the same story.
(dadadali has hybrid vigour, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 14:24, 1 reply)

I think my toes are going to be permanently curled up from now on
So thank you
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 14:30, closed)