The rope.
These gigantic thick course bastards were rarely used, there seemed to be no point to them except for hanging from the ceiling and looking a little phallic with their length, girth and smoothed ends due to the wax dip they received to prevent fraying.

They were held from the ceiling on a track and secured to one wall of the sports hall, they were gathered together against the wall and the rope pull that drew them into position was tied well out of reach. I'd only even seen them being used when watching local TV news, where the stereotypical sadist PE teacher would stand there wearing the traditional uniform of burgundy tracksuit, balding head and crap white tennis shoes and would watch children scurry up them and presumably disappear at the top. They'd never ever show the descent.

Then, as a 14 year old I saw them out for the first time. They built some form of circuit obstacle course for us all complete, formed out of a collection of equipment that had been rotting in the store cupboard since the early seventies.

The fuckers hung there, secured in place and I realised that I'd do what I'd seen them do in the background on occassional dull local interest stories in my parents living room for years.

The route was faily dull to be brutally honest, for some stupid reason they decided that rather than climb the rope we would use it to swing across a sizable crash mat and then approach the next obstacle.

I started the course and knew that several pieces of apparatus ahead of me lay that rope swing. I'd done this numerous times at the adventure playground and was well aware of what needed to be done, grab the rope, and swing. I worked towards it, taking each obstacle with ease. I didn't really possess athletic prowess but the obstacles were so piss poor that it wasn't exactly necessary.

I grabbed that thick hemp woven bastard and pulled myself up, the swing went somewhat naturally, but for security I instinctively wrapped my legs around the sodding thing. The release on the other side was fine, I released my arms, pulled my legs off the rope to drop to the floor, but there was a problem. The way I held the rope and effectively clasped it between my legs for that brief second meant it was in prime position to give me the most evil friction burn I've ever experienced, cutting straight through my shorts, underwear and running the coarse rope right along my tender 14 year old scrotum.

Naturally, I was desperate to avoid any fucker finding out about this and developing a cruel and moderately amusing nickname based around my unfortunate incident, so continued to do the course with a slightly awkward gait to protect my dignity. A quick trip to the changing room to switch my shorts and I was back in action. Anyone who asked why I was walking like the school bike was merely told that I pulled a muscle, fortunately the teacher let me avoid the rope after that in case it aggrovated the injury.

I think that week was the longest period during my teenage years where I managed to avoid wanking like, well, a teenager!
( Muns, Thu 19 Nov 2009, 20:50, Reply)