Wounds

My hands are currently blistered and both shins bruised from mishaps in Monday's trapeze session. Trivial injuries, of course, or I'd be whining and moaning like the big girl's blouse I secretly am.

This sort of thing happens quite often these days, and although it can be painful and inconvenient, I also have to admit to a sneaky and juvenile enjoyment of these scrapes and grazes. Sometimes the results can look quite impressive -- the first time I went rollerblading I wound up with a massive black bruise over my whole left hip which took weeks to go away and, actually, fucking hurt. But it was probably worth it to be able to show it to people and have them go "Eeuurgh!"

Like I said, juvenile.

There's also a kind of pride in having acquired one's injuries in doing something vaguely adventurous. Not that rollerblading is, especially, or flying for that matter, but at least you can point at your scars as evidence of at least one evening not spent vegging in front of the TV. As Ian rather unkindly put it, "It butches you up a bit."

On the other hand, the gap between this sort of wear-your-scrapes-with-pride stuff and actual debilitating injury can sometimes be alarming narrow.

This week one of my co-flyers crashed viciously against the platform and spent the rest of the night ice-packed and immobile. I don't think anything was broken, but she'll probably be out of action for a while. Some time ago, someone else fractured her spine on the trampoline -- you can imagine the palaver required to manœuvre a person with a spinal injury off a big elastic surface. These incidents are not uncommon.

So far I've been lucky -- just the odd sprain or pulled muscle -- but even those can put a real damper on things. It took a good couple of months after May's face plant to regain full mobility in my shoulder and wrist, which made, say, doing a handstand or shoulder press pretty much impossible. (Not that my handstands are any good anyway, but at least uninjured I can practice and hope, however vainly, for improvement.)

I don't generally think of any of the things I do as actually dangerous -- well, apart from cycling in London, which is so obviously suicidal it doesn't even merit comment -- but occasionally after some near miss I do start to think: is this really a sensible thing for a man of my age to do? Isn't it about time I jacked all this in and settled down to a gentle middle age? Take up gardening and afternoon naps. Get a houseboy and a dog.

Well, maybe not quite yet. And let's face it, a few hours of mildy silly activity a week hardly makes me a candidate for Jackass.
Posted by matt at October 22, 2003 01:20 PM