Cultural differences.
When I was about 15 I went on a school trip to Japan. I had been studying the language then for about 3 years.
We had a fucking blast - some of the adventures I have already chronicled in these hallowed pages previously.
As part of the trip we had a "home-stay", where we lived with a Japanese family for a few weeks and went to their school. To be reciprocated later.
Whilst at the school we got to play their sports...

Shorinji-kempo - teaching clueless teenage boys pressure point techniques. Yay!
Kyudo - Shooting big, fuck off arrows with big, fuck off bows at itty-bitty targets. Cool.
Sumo - skinny, white Aussie boys getting pasted by big, Japanese fellas. Nothing suss!
Judo - excellent as I hadn't done it in a few years, was great to be back on the horse. You never really forget - it's like getting thrown down onto a mat.
Kendo - offended the sensei when he tried present me with a training sword as he could see my aptitude (I'd done a couple of years of iaido). Actually got in trouble for that 1 once my teachers found out.

Sure as fuck beat kicking & chasing a piece of leather around a field.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Thu 26 Apr 2012, 0:07, 4 replies)

Apparently...
when playing particularly badly during a beach volleyball tournament it is considered 'childish' to kick the net support hard enough to make it collapse. It transpires further that it 'serves you right you twat' when the bare foot you used to kick said post turns an interesting shade of black and you have to watch the remainder of the match from the subs bench.

Not that I have ever been in this situation you understand.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Wed 25 Apr 2012, 22:53, 1 reply)

I once ran over my own finger while skateboarding.

(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 22:50, 4 replies)

Too lazy to come up with a new story, appropriately enough
I haven't been on a sports field since, so this roasted pea from my childhood days will have to serve.

Deep in darkest Somerset, a yellow-eyed headmaster peered through his tobacco-stained windows and noticed that, for the first time in three hundred and eleventy years, it wasn't raining. His brow furrowed atop his wrinkled head as he picked up the phone, dialed an extension, and breathed a single word into the receiver. A word which would change history, alter destinies, and cause more death than he could ever have imagined.

"Aerobics."

Plans were put in motion. A matter of hours later the entire school, all one thousand pupils, teachers, assistants, administrative staff and the creepy old goblin who ran the tuck-shop gathered on the largest playing field and stood facing two scaffolding towers topped with an enormous PA system. A crude stage sat between them, assembled from wooden planks, gym mats and old benches. Some of us nervously joked that we were about to witness a public execution. Hah! Today was not to be the end of just one victim. Instead of a hooded hangman there, stood on the stage, was Miss O'Leary, school Head of PE.

Miss O'Leary was, naturally, a raging lesbian with a red-cheeked love of physical excercise that made a Hitler Youth leader look like, well, a typical B3tan. Looking back, she resembled God's first, rejected attempt at creating Ellen MacArthur (who was fresh from completing the first solo circumnavigation of her mum's womb at the time.)

With a nod from proto-Ellen, Mr Armstrong (the music teacher) handed her a microphone and pulled a huge lever. Giant speaker stacks sizzled and hummed and her voice, electrically enhanced, roared at us:

"Just copy me!"

Kylie began singing The Locomotion. Miss O'Leary begain doing star jumps and slowly the rest of us began jumping too. There we were, over a thousand of us, bouncing away in an ungainly parody of communist state mass public excercise. It beat double maths, anyway.

The occasional laugh and shreik came to our ears over the deafening chart pop. Strangely the laughs grew louder and more frequent, despite the excercise. I could see ranks breaking as I looked around me. Something wasn't right, I could feel it, but what could I do? I could see no escape, nor any obvious sign of danger. My sense of unease grew.

Then, with a mighty, wet SMACK, the first worm hit me in the face. Lured to the surface by the rhythmic pounding of two thousand pairs of feet, earthworms covered the ground. The mud and grass was barely visible, we were star jumping (this is the only move I know) on top of a writhing carpet of slimy, brown worms. Pandora's box had opened. Hell's gates were breached, and battle was joined.

Raising my head as if recovering from shell shock I looked up to a sky filled with countless flying annelids. There was no laughter anymore, only terrified, disgusted female screams. Children running for shelter, diving behind other children, crying, shouting, desperately flinging squirming invertebrates to cover their retreat, scrabbling in the mud for more ammunition; it was Guernica with living bullets.

I saw heroism that day, true, but it's the horror that haunts my sleep now.
( Scrumper, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 21:19, 3 replies)

Also, Deathball
We played it at school lunchtimes. There were no rules. Frequently, there was no ball. What there was, was a free for all.
( MatJ LOOK, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 21:08, 2 replies)

Get the tea out...
Well, as I was one of the people (along with Scarpe) who have spent years whining about this not having been asked yet, I suppose I’d better tell some of my stories…




I was a tubby child from the ages of 8 to 14 (partly related to an injury that made it hard to run very far without my ankle giving way), but I enjoyed most sports and tried hard even in the ones (i.e. football) that I didn’t. However, every school has its fair share of those unwilling or unable to participate in P.E. lessons, and CMS was no exception.

It was a wet and slightly miserable October day in about 1999, and we were out on the school fields for a nice game of touch rugby in the healthy autumnal sleet. First off were the throwing drills, and I was partnered with one of nature’s IT directors – a slightly otherworldly girl called D. We lined up in two lines some thirty feet apart and on the signal, we threw our balls. On this occasion, two things went wrong. Firstly, D was distracted by a swirling in the aether somewhere to her right, and missed the signal that she might have to catch something in the next few seconds. The second thing was that I lost my grip on the slippery ball and hurled it far higher than normal. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the ball drifted through the grey skies on a direct course for D’s head. On reflection, it was perhaps not a good idea to shout for her attention. Had I not done so, she might have not taken the ball quite so squarely in the face. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have the memory of her expression in the millisecond before the ball connected to remind me that things could be worse.

D never really liked me after that, and seemed to forget her kit an awful lot…



Moving on a few years, we see the beginnings of my love of skiing. Now, any sport that has as its main premise the act of sliding down a steep and often rocky slope with some bits of wood on your feet is going to be a minefield for crashes. Some of the more memorable ones (not all involving me) have been:


I wouldn’t stand like that if I were you:

It was my second day ever of skiing. I was eighteen and on a school trip to Austria with quite a few of my friends as a birthday present from my parents. Not having skied before, I started out in the special group – but after learning quickly enough to get very bored, I was moved up to the middle group, away from the safety of the nursery slopes. The jump was quite hefty and I had a lot of difficulty keeping up for the first few hours. At one point I had crashed near the top of a slope. When I untangled my knees from somewhere in the middle of my lower back I looked down the slope to see my group waiting for me. “Sod this” I thought. “I won’t bother turning. I’ll just snowplow down to them”.

(A quick interjection here – snowplowing is a learning technique where you hold your skis in a wedge shape to limit your speed. The catch is that it ONLY works if you lean forwards. As you were.)

Sadly, the first bump flung me backwards – but not off my skis. I was now sitting on the backs of my skis, unable to get up, and flying unstoppably down the hill towards the smallest and frailest thirteen-year-old in the group. He was standing facing up the slope with, crucially, his legs apart. I was heading directly for the gap between his legs. Various thoughts crossed my mind in the next few crowded seconds, not least of which was the fear that I might simply continue onwards over a cliff edge if I couldn’t find a way to stop. I could have tucked myself in and passed cleanly between his legs. I could have done that. Instead, my self-preservation instincts kicked in and just as he spotted me thundering towards him, I spread my arms wide and swept his legs out from under him.

I made another enemy that day, but death by cliff-plunging was averted.

Quickest ever slalom crash:

I always thought the idea was to ski down the course, not ski face-first into the side of the timing hut at the top. Apparently I was wrong.

How to apologise:

When you crash into a disabled skier at 25mph, the correct means of apologising is to shout “SORRY!” at the top of your voice as you frantically ski off down the mountain, pursued by various shouts.

I’ve broken my brain:

If after crashing heavily into a snowboarder his expression changes from anger to fear and he says “mate, you’ve got blood dripping out of your ear”, it’s a good idea to check that you haven’t merely torn your earlobe BEFORE you start panicking.

Where’s G gone?

Snow fences should not, under any circumstances, be used as trampolines. I never knew you could get someone’s back to look like that, although the tree and selection of rocks he hit as well probably didn’t help. I’m told it took G twenty minutes to find his right ski again.




For those that don’t know, I’m also a keen power kiter, and have been an instructor for a couple of years too. I would like to pass on a little list of things to avoid, in the hope that any other kiters find new and interesting ways to maim themselves.

If you’re flying at a night-time festival, make sure there are no children playing nearby. If there are, make sure you don’t make a jump that carries you directly toward the head of a four year old girl. If you absolutely have to do both these things, don’t try and flick yourself up and over her. The wind will drop and you WILL kick her with both feet in the side of the head. Her father will not be pleased, and karma WILL be satisfied when you walk smack into a tent pole later in the evening.



If you haven’t flown very much, for the love of God, don’t lie down on your front and let your friends hang onto your trousers. You will be dragged facedown and at speed for over a hundred metres of short dry grass. When you manage to get up again, your friends will have tied your trousers (which you were swiftly parted from) into another kite, and they will be flying proudly above the school fields. You will also be walking funny for a week as nine separate friction burns in a variety of delicate areas make their presence felt (disclaimer – this one wasn’t me).

If you turn up to Captain Hood-Butter’s “things that fly” bash and try to show off, you will crash heavily in front of several prominent b3tans, and feel extremely stupid.

If you’re performing a demonstration at a kite festival, make sure you’re not standing in front of a tree. You run the risk of thinking the wind is less than it really is. When you launch your kite, you may well be thrown seven feet in the air and thirty along the ground. Your smooth roll on landing will, again, not alleviate feelings of stupidity – but this time, you will have several hundred people laughing at you.

Don’t (at another kite festival) throw your helmet into a cornfield in a fit of pique after your kite has folded for the nth time that day. You only have to go and get it back again with, yes, several dozen people watching and laughing.

If you’re flying a tandem buggy (think two three-wheeled go-karts joined together, often used for giving people who can’t kite a feel for what it’s like), make sure the person in the back is lighter than you. If they are not, there are certain things you cannot do. When you find yourself pinned under the buggy and sliding across an airfield, by all means force your arm down so that you tear off large amounts of skin. When the kite lines snap and you stop, watch out. You’re not out of the woods. You should make sure that your seatbelt hasn’t shifted so that when your friends turn you over, you don’t end up with your left testicle trapped between your body and the straps. That will hurt more then the huge patch of raw flesh on your arm. To avoid adding insult to injury, move your hands away once you pull the release strap so that you don’t land, crotch first, on your own clenched fist.



Miscellaneous others:

Even if you think your opponent’s (70mph+) tennis serve is going out, it might be an idea to move. Otherwise the ball might dip at the last second, bounce off a stone, and rebound directly into your balls. He still beat me though, the bastard.

If you have a particularly ferocious serve yourself, try to follow through correctly. That way, you won’t hit yourself in the nuts.


Don’t cycle while drunk. Really. You will get thrown out of asda for making a scene, then you’ll ride into a bridge support on the way home, bending the front wheel of your three week old racing bike.

If you decide to distract your opponent in a pool game, don’t do it by hoisting your balls onto the table in line with his shot. He might deliberately chip the white so it lands squarely on your left bollock.
( MatJ LOOK, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 20:50, 4 replies)

Fuck, this is boring.
Anyone got any more stories about boobs?

I remember on a cross country run, one very popular chesty girl came in near to last, cringing with embarrassment & sporting 3 well placed muddy hand prints.
One on each boob and one on her pert bottom.
We may have hated cross country but it was a good chance to ogle and have a smoke and for one lucky guy, to cop a feel too.
It wasn't me.

/edit. I'll be awarding points for humourless whiny replies about sexual harassment being a joke, we were 13 FFS.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 20:30, 4 replies)

Wrestling match when I was fifteen
I was on my back about to get pinned for the first time in ever, so I bridged. For the guy trying to pin me, he should have hit the back of my head to break the bridge. This motherfucker hit my forehead so it rolled back and I ended up laying on my head. Broke my neck. Not a bad break, just a slight fracture on the outside of my vertebrae, away from my spinal cord.

Was that bad enough?
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 20:12, Reply)

Can we include John Terry?
Pleeeeeeease?
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Wed 25 Apr 2012, 20:05, Reply)

Twickenham
Last year I played rugby at Twickenham, then got to watch the Aviva Premiership final for free.

This year I trained with Ben Foden, Jamie Heaslip (who spent the afternoon being abused by Graham Rowntree as this was the Thursday after the England-Ireland match, where the Ireland pack sent 80 minutes going backwards), John Barclay and Jamie Roberts.

How bad was it for me? Best days of my life.
(Vigilante Man weeps because you're stupid., Wed 25 Apr 2012, 19:26, Reply)

Boobs
Cumquat mays story about swimmers reminded me of this. Back when i was a teenager, i was a quite the swimmer. Once we were on training camp in Austria (up in the mountains, the thin air and all..). We actually swam 10 km a day. I ate 1 kg chokoade a day, and still managed to loose 4 kg on that camp. But i digress (you are waiting for the "boobs"-part).

There was this girl who preferred to swim topless, to avoid tan lines on her upper body when we trained in the outdoor pool. This was accepted by all of us as something completely normal. I found it a bit odd first, but after a very short while i didn't even pay attention to her boobs anymore, as weird as it sounds..
(Robotnik, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 12:46, 17 replies)

De Agostini...
Before I matured in to a bill-paying adult, I used to ride horses a lot. And it's well known how dangerous poncing about on the back of a horse can be! I used to do cross country, show jumping and dressage, and strangely the worst of my injuries came from not actually being in the saddle. I was practising showjumping and had gotten off the horse to adjust the height of a jump. All well and good. Went to get back on her and she walks away a little. Follow her, go to reach out for the reins - little git spins round, bucks and boots me full force in the shin with her rear hooves, sending little me flying 5-6 feet through the air and landing on my arse in the sand, as she runs off to the other side of the arena. Jodphurs aren't exactly the easiest things to roll up and take a look at your shins in, so, like a true winner, I yank 'em down and take a look. Shin is blue. Skin slightly grazed but the bruise was growing before my eyes. Oh, and I'm on the farm alone. It was at that point that I decided trying to catch my horse was a bad idea and limped off to the tack room to await assistance, more ashamed and worried about not being able to catch her than the huge bruise forming on my shin. Broken? Amazingly, no, just a good month or two of manky multicoloured shin flesh.
( Bathory, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 12:45, 4 replies)

50 yard dash Mon vs Squirrel
(Wavey lines take us back to erm….Yesterday lunchtime)

An unusually clear day means that Mon is heading out for his usual lunchtime walk near the local duckpond to get a little fresh air and see if the local custard cream addicted ducks are still alive (See Bullies QOTW). On my way to the place I pass through a narrow alley around 50 – 75 yards long with an area to the left fenced off to act as some form of overflow for the place/ to keep the local oiks out of the wooded bit that backs onto people’s houses.

As I started walking down I noticed a grey squirrel on top of the fence next to me scampering along. “Ooh bet he’s thinking I’m going to chase him or something, I’d better stop” thinks I and so I stop still. Grey squirrel also stops. I decide to back off a little…so does my new grey friend. “So it’s a race you want is it then my friend?” I say aloud to the tree rat and I’m not too sure if it was due to the high quantity of Haribo I’d been eating earlier that day but he seemed to give me the look that says come on then. I start off with a decent jog and Fenrir my squirrel sidekick (named as he had a grey back and I’m re-reading the HP books to my second kid at the moment) seemed to match my pace. I wasn’t having this furry little sod beating me to the end and upped my tempo….so did he….grr that’s it! I let out a burst of speed and fenrir…….stopped. "Ha ha time to turn round and laugh in his furry face" was what was going through my mind…sadly that isn’t what happened.

Mid turn I managed to put my right foot in a patch of mud and as I was wearing a pair of shoes that had zero grip I ended up doing some form of mad wobbling attempt to keep myself balanced before eventually falling flat on my ass.

While doing the usual pick myself up and check to see that no one had seen me fall over I looked back to see Fenrir. After a short look at me he seemed to shrug his shoulders, turn away and run back to the beginning of the alley and stay there, waiting for someone else to turn up and fall for his trick. I swear he must have planned it all along and may have already done this to someone else (Maybe I was hoping that there has been more people than me outwitted by a squirrel)

If there wasn’t a risk of getting bitten and some disease I swear I would have punched the little sod clean off the fencepost. Thank god it’s raining today.

Tl:dr Man races squirrel, falls over
(mon bison powered by magnets, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 12:01, 4 replies)

The Horrors of 5 a Side
Playing a 5 a side "friendly" competition last year I happened to run at full speed behind the net (full size outdoor pitch with 4 games before anyone starts picking holes) and straight into a knot in the middle of a rope tying the net to a fence. I crumpled to the ground winded and in quite a lot of pain.

I get up and carry on with every breath being a pain in the... well, chest I guess! Turns out on later inspection I had cracked a rib at the top left of my rib cage. What made this worse is it was summer and I have really bad hay fever, every breath let alone sneeze, sniffle or blow of my nose was horrible

6 weeks later I decide to go back to 5 a side with a few mates. Worst idea ever. Going for a tackle I get my knee clipped by a player running by and I dropped like a stone with my knee banjaxed. 8 week lay off for that one.

Decided to go back after that was healed, (you can see where this is going) went for a header against another player and got knocked backwards losing my balance (I’m a skinny lad, don't weigh that much!) landing on another player who was just trying to get up. My ribs met his pointed elbow and a sickening crack followed by a familiar pain shot through me. Another cracked rib.

Just to top it all off when that was healing nicely I was watching a footy final (not saying which one as I’ll don't want your sympathy for supporting them) which ended with me celebrating and some big bastard grabbing me in a bear hug and swinging me round....

Another cracked rib.

3 cracked ribs and a destroyed knee in 8 months all due to sport. And I was told exercise was good for you.
(Samantha Bricks Better half done a poo on, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 9:19, 4 replies)

The best sport ever
One day at school, over lunch, my mates and I got bored. So, as you do in these situations, we decided to do something unbelievably stupid and dangerous, but equally awesome.

We detached a fire door from it's frame, removed the heavy door handle with subtle kicks to make sure our 'board' was aerodynamic, and then decided to 'surf' down the staircase of the 4-storey block.

Amazing.

My mate Chris broke his arm in three places and we very nearly killed a Bash (little old lady Lunch Monitor) but that's the price you pay for greatness.
(Mr Fudge It shouldn't be illegal to have sex with an eagle, Wed 25 Apr 2012, 8:41, 4 replies)

The Greg bin.
I don't know if anyone knew who "Greg" was but the name certainly instilled fear into us.
If you forgot your PE kit, you were sent to the Greg Bin to dig through some nasty looking bits of grey clothing and select something to wear.
Naturally your mates would then take the piss mercilessly and you would start to itch.
I moved schools part way through high school and having been a county level sprinter and fair decent footballer I proceeded to hide any talents I had, preferring to stay under the radar and apply just enough effort to get away with it.
Only on the final sports day I showed what I could do, ripping off ahead of the others and winning easily which pissed the PE teacher off something rotten. He swore and cursed into my grinning face.
Happy days.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 21:24, 6 replies)

Those good at sports may also be good at other things.
The captain of my high school's football team became the CEO and chairman of the board of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, and currently is the chairman of the board of Bank of America. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_O._Holliday Yes, I am that old and I am crap at sports. As they say in the South, I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
(uncle_bud is not the jelly roll king., Tue 24 Apr 2012, 20:54, 3 replies)

I was a swimmer
A good one as a teenager, though as I got older the rest of the field gradually caught up and overtook me, and by the time I was 19 I'd grown to hate the endless laps of training. Still, I had a lot of swimmer mates. One friend had been selected for the Barcelona olympics, and had been given a free 5 star hotel room for the night as a reward. He had a party in his room with about 20 of us. I had the idea of ordering a bloody mary through room service. when it arrived, others did too, and soon the whole party was binging on cocktails. As it turned out, the drinks weren't included in the free room, and he got stung for thousands. A couple of weeks later, he had a revenge of sorts. A nightclub had been turned over to swimmers for the evening. While I was sharing a joint with a couple of mates in a toilet cubible, some fucker started pissing under the door splashing our trousers. It was Kieren Perkins, who went on to win gold medals in two olympics, sticking up for his mate. These kind of antics were par for the course with swimmers. In general, they're not a sophisticated lot
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 20:18, 2 replies)

A warning to parents:
You may be thinking that giving your rapidly-growing child sports footwear that is slightly too big is a wise investment. They'll grow into the pumps eventually won't they?

Well, pay heed! When an older child (Laura Lee) steps on the end of one of the toes during netball practice, your child won't feel it. She'll attempt to carry on running, trip over and end up with a greenstick fracture on her wrist. Her teacher (Mrs Carter) will, after about 10 mins, try and force her back into the game without consideration for her general health.

After 6 weeks in plaster and around 20 years, she'll remember this incident and relate it to strangers on the Internet.

DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES HER PARENTS DID!
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 15:24, 7 replies)

Here, have a repost.
Ron is tall, lanky, athletic. He grew up in a small town in Australia and his uncle had a dairy farm not too far away. When he was about ten the uncle started telling him that when he got a bit older he'd be grown up enough to help with the milking. Ron thought that would be fun.

So a year later Ron was getting up at stupid o'clock, riding his bike for 15 minutes to his uncle's farm and encouraging cows to do what they do best. Then it was back on the bike and home for a shower, breakfast, then go to school. After school, back on the bike and out to the farm for the rest of the daylight. Sometimes he got to babysit the uncle's two little kids while the uncle and aunt went to the pictures or the pub. After the police chipped him for riding home in the dark, the uncle sprang for a bike light.

When he hit high school he was a head taller than the other boys. One of the teachers asked if he'd like to try out for the basketball team after school.

"I can't, I have to help with the milking at Uncle Frank's farm."

A year passed. then same teacher, same suggestion, same answer.

"How much is your uncle paying you?"

He said "The scales fell from my eyes."

Four years of milking, washing out dairies and babysitting kids and his entire payment had been a bike lighting set and a few meals.

He spent the rest of his afternoons playing basketball.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 14:00, 3 replies)

I was at school with Michael Barrymore
He was awesome at Killer pool.
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 13:36, 1 reply)

and then, when I looked around
there was a cup of coffee my Mum had brought in.

What?! wanking is a sport for us pasty-faced shut-ins, isn't it? now there's an Olympics event I really, really wouldn't want to see.
(RTFM May your god go with you, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 10:07, 10 replies)

Cross country running in high school
A shock to the system to say the least as it was always done for the first three PE lessons after the New Year, the least favourite time of year for the whole school.

Back in the 1st year I came in with an overall time that placed me a credible 25th out of about 140 fellow pupils in my year. Remarkable really as running isn't my thing and never has been.

Time passes as it does and eventually I reach 5th year and complete the run for one last time. Upon checking my time it is pretty much identical to what I posted the previous four years. As I got older I didn't get any quicker and this had the effect of placing me in 125th position.

I'm quite sure that if I done the run today I'd post an identical time to what I did 20 years ago.
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 9:34, Reply)

Cricket
I used to be quite a keen cricketer, back when I was about 14. I used to play for a local team, and even heard that a school team was being started. At the time, I was in a school in the process of amalgamation, but my year was yet to be joined with the other side, meaning that as my school had never had a cricket team before, I didn't have a clue who anyone else on the team was.

One day, I show up to indoor training, and as I get set up to bat, I find I've forgotten my gloves, which was irritating. I mentioned this to one of the other lads, and he tosses me his pair to use. They were bloody tiny, but I didn't really have a choice. They were the type where the padding of the fingers stops, rather than curling round.

As the gloves were a bit too small for me, it turned out that the pads weren't fully covering my fingers. I found this out when one of the faster bowlers in our team pitches one up at me, and pinches my finger between the ball and the bat. Stung like a motherfucker, that did.

I tried to shake it off though, and attempt to carry on playing. I took the next couple of shots, but it very quickly became clear that I had actually hurt my finger quite badly. I point this out, and start walking back. As I'm walking along the floor, I see the lad that bowled at me staring at my hand (still in the glove) in horror. I can't tell what's wrong, so I take my glove off to see that I've managed to split my finger quite badly, the thing he'd been staring at was the rather impressive amount of blood leaking out.

Ended up having to go to hospital, wasn't the most fun having that cleaned. Went back the next week with two pairs of gloves, one pair for me, and one pair to replace the ones I'd ruined.

Note to all, make sure any safety kit fits you properly, else things can really, really hurt.

TL:DR - Idiot wears wrong sized gloves, hurts hand.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 8:54, 1 reply)

Killer
Killer was your basic adolescent ball game for breaks.
Stand in a circle, one person throws the ball in the air and whoever caught it threw it at their preferred victim.
You could either leg it and run for your life or join the fracas to be the first person with the ball.
Once the ball was in play the game continued until the end of the break. We used a tennis ball, and for a (very) brief period a cricket ball (one day - 3 trips to hospital and one to the dentist - told by the head of year to lose the cricket ball. At least he was a realist and knew we weren't going to stop playing).

I learned early on that the key strategy was ALWAYS know where the ball was, zig-zagging didn't always work, stutter-stepping or just plain coming to a dead stop were the best tactics for ending the day without a dead leg or a serious bruise.

One day we were playing and some unremembered bastard passed, not threw at, passed the ball to the one person you did not want to be on receiving end of his throw.
Arms like a post spinach Popeye and accuracy of a qualified sniper.
I see the ball leave his hand and zip toward me at warp factor ten and accelerating to speeds Mr Hawking tell us are not possible.
It starts as a grey white dot and just gets bigger, no deviation in course.
This baby is going to spang me right between the eyes.
I was stood still.
In a split second of clarity I realise I have zero seconds to take evasive action and did not even have the time to step to one side to evade even a glancing hit.
I let my knees go, I drop the necessary three to four inches for the ball to pass over my head with an audible whoosh.
A narrow escape.
Unfortunately the boy stood behind me, looking in the same direction did not have the luxury of time to evade said tennis ball.

Our first ever knockout with a tennis ball.
Sorry Alan, but that would have HURT.
Oh, yes it did, didn't it.
Our reaction, we left him there until some girls got a teacher.
The staffs reaction, a lot of laughter and we were told not to aim for the head.

Length, 40 to 60 feet, but incredibly quickly. Sound effects were amazing.
(Le Grenouille, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 0:30, 1 reply)

also...
Cold morning, 'bout minus 5 decrees. You're shoved outside in a fecking polo shirt and shorts and made to play rounders. You grasp the bat in your hands the bitter wind slapping you hard in the face and your team mate throws the ball. A cricket ball. You swing as hard as you can miss the fucker and it smacks you right on your knuckles. Your cold stiff knuckles. No wonder we preferred to shut ourselves in a cubical for an hour and a half to sit on a pissy floor next to an overflowing sanny-bin.
PE, what a load of bollocks
(shezam slouching towards nirvana., Tue 24 Apr 2012, 0:19, Reply)

football to the nose.
Fuck.right.of !
(shezam slouching towards nirvana., Mon 23 Apr 2012, 22:49, 3 replies)

You gotta keep running
When you've been kicked in the shin you gotta keep running or else you'll crumple and never get up again!
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Mon 23 Apr 2012, 18:42, Reply)

A tale of our schools brilliant timetabling...
As with all academies, our school had the day split up into multiple periods, our classes consisting of either single or double period lessons. The powers at be (in a surprising burst of logic) deemed that PE was to be a double period lesson, actually giving enough time to get changed both into and out of PE kit and actually have a lesson in the middle.

Except when they put the double lesson over break time... With most classes normal enough - you drop pens, go eat crisps and fight for a while, then come back and pick up where you left off. With most PE lessons it was also fine - stop playing games, escape to the canteen still in PE kit, pick up where you left off after.

On the other hand, did nobody think that having a double period of swimming over a break was a bit of a stupid idea? It was normally bad enough for body conscious teenagers to be stripping down to swimming shorts on front of each other, an interesting experiment with the normal teenage thought process when then confronted with all the girls in swimming costumes, but to chuck everyone out for fifteen minutes in the middle of the class to the freezing changing rooms while the teacher went for the break? Getting changed was pointless as by the time you were dried off you would have to get changed again, so it inevitably was spent shivering and trying to avoid getting bare skin slapped by any of the less friendly and more bullying minded members of class.

Did nobody consider the thought that for a class with PE over a break, to just skip on doing swimming lessons for that six week block of the year and leave us doing normal games?
(442, Mon 23 Apr 2012, 18:12, 2 replies)

Ok, an actual story or two...
I have two actual stories too!

The first was in late primary school: we were having a kickabout in the playground during break, when yours truly was passed an easy ball. As I stopped it with the sole of my shoe, my foot decided it really didn't want to touch the ball, and slid sideways off it, sending me sidways into the ground, my ankle having taken all my (not inconsiderable) weight without the aid of a foot. To this day I have no idea how I managed this. I spent the next two days hobbling about being told to "pack it in and stop faking it" by teachers and parents alike (i'm really starting to see a theme here).

After another day had passed, and the swelling had not abated, my mother finally took me to a medical professional - i.e. her mate, a physiotherapist's assistant. Turns out I'd damn near torn off my calcaneofibular ligament. Basically one HELL of a sprain :(




A few years after that, being a chunky sod who didn't mind a bit ofpain, I ended up in the school rugby team alternating between prop and hook depending who'd 'forgotten' their kit that day*. One fateful rainy day we had practice; we were in a scrum, and I was in tighthead.

All of a sudden I just felt the ground give, and I don't remember much after apart from waking on a bench in the locker room.

Turns out my footing had given way in the mud, bringing us all down, the hook landing particularly hard on my left shoulder, dislocating it. Ow. The school nurse just called me a big jessie and popped it back in, but I swear Ratched did it wrong or something. It still feels weird and stiff when the weather is damp....







*Side note - I bloody loved being prop, never could get the hang of loosehead though :)
(Fleximus Rex briefly gave up lurking on, Mon 23 Apr 2012, 16:43, 5 replies)