Box jumps, you have made me your bitch.

I have always been scared of box jumps, worried I wouldn't be able to clear the box and slip and land on my shins. I've seen what happens when Gravity takes a cheap shot at a strong, able-bodied athlete during this ridiculous exercise, and it aint perty. Normally, I appreciate colorful bruises and scars, cause showing them off and telling the story about The Battle is the reward, even if the clear winner was the opponent. The fact that someone threw themselves at something so fast and hard as to cause an injury (that even common folk, not them trained up White Coats, can recognize), in the name of Victory, is pretty dang sexy.

However, yesterday, that fear was finally realized.* And it didn't feel sexy. At all.

The low blow happened when I was trying to show (off to) Nisha what my combo with the water bottle looked like, cause she said she didn't understand it. So I was all, "oh here, this is the step I used as my box jumps, like this." And I jumped. And I slipped. And I smacked my tibiae against the corner of the tile ledge. It was painful, but not "oh look, my leg is torn open, that's not surprising cause this hurts so bad." I figured I'd have bad bruises, but then I looked down and noticed a little blood. I rolled up my jeans to inspect the damage, and it was ugly. Hideous, in fact. This time, more than my ego was damaged, and in a few weeks, I'm gonna have the scars to prove it. The Game (I can't even call it a battle, cause it was so nonchalant and unplanned. Previous and future Battles always included and always will include a pre-session psych-up, sometimes with shadow-boxing, and always a mosey, or compass, or both, just to get the blood flowin to the right places.) ripped a huge gash in my left leg, requiring a trip to the ER, x-rays, 5 x 1-L bottles of sterile water for cleaning, local anesthetic, 9 stitches in the left shin and 4 stitches in the right shin, antibiotics and pain meds for the next five days.

I'll spare the gory details, unless yall want them, in which case I will describe every last gnarly, flesh-tearing image I can possibly conjure. For real, this shit is all rotten.com style. There are pictures, but only on my very old camera, so I can't put them onto my computer til I make a photo cd.

Gravity, I grudgingly accept your "victory" this time, but you only get .57, because you were playin' dirty. In fact, you shouldn't even be awarded any fractions of points, but you'll get whats comin...tomorrow night for squats.

*I may never attempt another box jump in my life.