Coming Apart at Every Nail

tommyrawblog@gmail.com





Coming Apart at Every Nail

Keeping physically fit
has always been a part of my life.

Well, maybe someone better tell my muscles that though, because they’ve been avoiding me
pretty much my entire life!

I don’t know why, but it seems for one reason or another, that muscles just don’t seem
to stick to me.

I mean, during my daily workout, if the lighting and shadows are just right, (oh be quiet LoL)... you could actually see a muscle, or two.

But, by the time I’m showered, and all powdered up, they’re gone. They're fuckin' GONE!

It’s truly a mystery!

It's like they melt away in the hot soapy water and dribble their way down the drain for goodness sakes. Maybe I should hire one of those CSI forensic evidence teams to see if
they could locate them?

But on a whole, I’m in pretty good shape.
Unlike my earlier husky years.

Well, at least my belly

isn’t covering my belt just yet!

But every once in awhile, something breaks down, and an injury occurs. We’ve all had our share of them throughout the years, right?

I’m sure you've had a few sprained ankles, jammed fingers and thrown footballs
to the head along the way.

For me, it’s been a constant battle with my knees. I used to do a lot of jogging in my teens and early twenties all around Staten Island. Okay, so sometimes I was jogging towards
the Mr. Softee ice-cream truck,
but it was jogging all the same.

But now, all of that pounding on my poor delicate body has begun to catch up to me, and every once in awhile my knees act up.

Usually, I just get a little water buildup, and it goes away in a day or two. But this one time, I actually did some real damage. I tore a tendon
on my left knee, right in half. Ouch!

Like a rubber band, it just snapped.

And, you’ll never guess what I was doing at the time when it happened. Go ahead, guess.

Nope!

I wasn’t jogging.

I was playing fucking wiffle ball!

Could you believe that shit?

Wiffle ball, while we were up at P.S. 22 school.

Imagine, all the years of playing football, baseball, basketball, softball, running, horsing around, drinking, driving and just 53 years
of living without a net.

And I get hurt playing wiffle ball!

Unbelievable, man.

But that’s not even the best part of the story. Easy now, I hear all of you saying I hope not! This story sucks so far dude!

No, the best part of the story happened during the rehabilitation of that knee. Oh man,
do I do some ridiculous things.

Just listen to this.

A day or two after the tendon had snapped I kinda knew that something was really wrong. So, I looked up a sports medicine doctor, for my ego of course, and set up an appointment.


He was located on Manor Road,
in Staten Island, New York.
Across the street from the Todt Hill Houses.

Oh, I didn’t tell him what sport I was playing when the injury occurred mind you. In fact, the only reason why I went to a sports medicine doctor, rather than just a regular one, was because I thought it sounded cooler!

You know, made for better conversation.
Stupid, right?

Well, when I got there, he grabbed my knee and began bending and flexing it like he had
fuckin’ Gumby in his hands.

I guess he actually thought that I was a
real athlete, with a large threshold for pain.
He couldn’t have been more wrong!

I quickly responded to the Gumby-like treatment, by saying...

“Whoooaaaa!

Doc, what the fuck ya doin’?

That hurts, man!”

So okay, that's not exactly what
Mean Joe Green would’ve said...

... but hey, look who we're talkin' about here.
I bruise like a fuckin' peach man!

(And you remember him
in that Coca Cola commercial right?)

Well, once he realized whom he was dealing with, he quickly switched his mode of operation from mainstream athlete, into, non-athlete pussy boy mode, and was a little more caring with the way he handled my fucking limb.

After all was said and done, he told me that I had snapped some kind of tendon or ligament, and that I had a choice of two remedies.

The first was to have an operation to repair it,
to which I promptly replied,

“Next!”

The second was to workout my legs and keep the muscles toned, which in turn would keep
the torn tendon in place.

Well, as you could guess,

I favored the latter!

I left the doctor’s office and decided that I was going to repair myself right here at home,
with my very own free-weights!

Who needs professional help anyway?

I can do anything.

I was the man with the plan.

Oh boy, that doesn't sound good at all!

But, before we move on, let me first give you a little background on my nightmarish dealings with free-weights.

First and foremost this should have made me stand clear of these things for the rest of my life.

I once sold an old set of weights to my 60 some odd year old neighbor at our yard sale while I was still living on Simonson Ave

back in Staten Island.

He told me that he wanted to get back into shape. Are you kidding me? Go grab a beer,

put the game on, and relax

for goodness sake will ya!!!

Less than a week later, he was dead!

C'mom dude.

Omen... or what?

But worse yet was my other friend who was pissed off that I sold them to my neighbor before he had a chance to buy them. He asked me if we could go get them back from his basement.

How fucking horrible is that??

There is just NO mercy in this life man... none! LoL

One time as a semi-drunk teenager...

Mmmmmmm... semi???

I tried to quietly sneak...

oh oh oh... I mean crawl through one of our basement windows on Simonson Ave. We used this window many many times to avoid detection... oh oh oh... I mean to gain entrance back into our house when we forgot

our "semi-drunken" key!

Well, I began crawling in feet first like always. But only this time I planted my foot on one end of a set of heavy barbells that were resting in the steel rungs of my workout bench.

And as I lowered myself down upon the weights, they tilted and finally came crashing down

with one end of the metal bar slicing into the paneled wall and ripped a cavernous

foot and a half tear into said paneling.

Houston... we have a problem!

The last quick “free weights” story happened a couple years prior to the knee injury. I was bench pressing about two hundred pounds give or take, and well, I did one repetition too many.

For on that last rep, the weight went down just fine, but... I had a little trouble getting it back up.

Oh, man, it sucked.

And I was all by myself at the time.

You’ve probably seen footage of this

happening to other people on those

funniest home video shows.

Well, my adventure would’ve been right up there in the top five of all-time bonehead moves.

Like I said, the weight went down, and stayed there. At first I didn’t think it was a problem.

I just gathered some steam,

and tried to push it back up again.

But by now, my arms were dead tired.

I couldn’t have picked my own nose

if I wanted to at that point

let alone lift 200 pounds!

And then,

the worst thing that could ever happen, happened.

I began to laugh.

I just started crackin’ up

with uncontrollable laughter.

But, I really just wanted to cry!

Because the bar was beginning to really crush me. But still, I was outta my mind with laughter.

I didn’t know what to do.

So, I did the only thing

that I could think of at the time.

I began to roll the bar,

with 200 pounds plus, of steel attached to it,

down my chest. LoL

Oh, man, it was just so funny.

Inch by inch, that bar of steel-death bruised it's way down my chest, over my stomach,

then crushing my fucking balls.

It then ended up parked atop

my now bruised thighs.


Still laughing hysterically, I was able to sit up, and throw the fucking steel plates of death

from my legs and onto the floor.

Oh, it was so embarrassing.

I was bruised black-and-blue

for days after that,

from my chest to my fucking thighs!
Talk about a pair of "blue balls"!

And before you ask…

I don’t know why I didn’t just tilt the fucking bar to one side while it was on my chest,

and let the weights crash to the ground.

That made too much sense I guess!

Now that you know what a spaz I could be with free weights, let’s get back to my injured knee and the task at hand.

I began a workout routine of legwork upstairs in my makeshift gym in the attic. I didn’t have a real leg machine like at the health spas,

but I had two things that were even better.

First, I had my ridiculous imagination.

Second, I also still had my free weights!

Ut oh, can ya smell it?

Can ya smell the disaster on the horizon?

So, I rigged up something that rivaled even the most expensive machines on the market.

So I thought.

Who was I, fuckin’ McGiever?

What’s he doin’?

Actually, I keep tellin’ my ex-wife Lynn,

that we were fucking Egyptians!

That we can do anything

we put our minds to.

Because hey, if those fuckers could build pyramids in the middle of the desert, then I wanna be like them! I wanna be able to do anything... like an Egyptian.

So, I took those free weights of mine,

and taped them right to my leg

and began my exercise routine.

Hey, who needed a two hundred-dollar a month health spa bill when I had the tape, the steel,

and the technical genius,

right there at my very own fingertips!

Man, I should’ve just paid the two hundred dollars. Just listen to this lunacy.

I sat on my makeshift bench, and laughed out loud at modern technology. So okay, I found out the hard way that I shouldn’t have taped the weights directly to my big fat, fucking, hairy legs. Oh be quiet... LoL

And that yes, hair does stick to the gluey side

of duct tape when pulled off.

Man, that hurt like a bitch!

How the fuck do chicks wax their hoochie's??

WOW!!

Hey, I know it was stupid... now!

But remember, I was injured at the time,

and wasn’t thinking too clearly.

Anyway, I was well on my way back to the athletic prowess that I held

before the snap occurred.

Mmmmmmm...

athletic prowess???

Again... just be quiet... LoL

So, the rehab was moving along rather nicely. And except for some missing hair and welts from the tape, my legs felt no pain at all.

Nor did the damaged knee.

So, I thought to myself, why should I just concentrate on my legs? Why not combine my regular workout with my rehab,

and save some time!?

Why couldn't I just focus on one thing at a time. Good grief dude.

No, not me, that would be the normal way

of doing it, right?

Sniff... sniff... sniff...

Umm, it smells as if the disaster

is just about ready

Let’s see.

Yep... it's ready!

Like I said, I felt working on my legs
just wasn’t enough, so I decided

to do some sit-ups at the same time.

What…… a…… dick!


I figured the weights that were taped to my ankles would be enough to hold my feet down. And, they were!


Actually, they held them down too good!


Because as I was alternating leg lift, sit up,
leg lift, sit up, and so on from the edge of my
makeshift bench, something else snapped!


Ut oh!
Chime the dinner bell honey.
It’s disaster time.


I pulled a muscle in my fuckin’ back so bad that I had to leave work, and go on workman’s compensation for a couple months!
A couple of MONTHS!!


Can you believe what I just told you?


I was rehabbing my injured knee,
and fucked up my back to the point
of having to take time off from work.


You muthafucka you.


Would someone please take those damn weights away from me already!


The Egyptian's pyramid has just
crumbled to the muthafucking ground!


I was left standing in the middle of the desert with a bad knee, hairless, bloodied ankles,
and a wrenched fucking back.


Can ya feel my pain or what?