Collision

 I am an invalid. Not in the sense that I am not valued or necessary to society though that is in fact true (I suspect I am one of those people who are making minimum positive contribution to the world around them since I am distinctly unhelpful, currently unemployed and not even likely to spend money, the one redeeming trait of the undeserving rich, to aid capitalism. A fact that I am rather proud of since this means that every positive I might take away from the society I add nothing to, therefore becomes a profit for myself in its entirety with nothing given back.) but in the sense that I am injured.

 Today I was injured in a truck related accident. Of all the things that it is considered mortally precariously to be involved in an accident with, one being a unicycle and ten being a jumbo jet, a truck comes in at around seven point five. The incident occurred this morning while I was out on my morning jog (to those who believed that I thought I avoided all forms of exercise like the plague, I would say that the plague was notoriously difficult to avoid, hence the high death count. The Duke of Edinburgh bronze award which I officially started two years ago and have predictably managed to procrastinate completing until this time, requires a minimum of one hour of extra curricular energy wastage every week maintained for one month).

 My jogging route takes me, first from my house to the local park. This route involves crossing a rather busy road where I have had quite a few near death (that is to say, near in the same way that Brixton is near Chelsea) experiences and numerous irate horns honked angrily at my general person. The sort of road which trucks hurtle through quite frequently, with speed enough to quickly transform any careless J-walkers (I have always wondered what the J in J walkers stands for? Jurassic? Japanese? Judgmental? Jewish? Jelly?) into a splatter on the road spread thinner than my grandfather's hair (which must be very thin considering he has been dead these last eight years).

 I made it across this perilous River Styx like road with some help from the zebra crossing ferryman, and entered the park which, according to my normal slightly optimistic running schedule, I would run four laps of in twenty minutes. There is a fifteen meter long section of the park where the path upon which I jog is flanked by two chest high metal fences, one marking the circumference around a basket ball court and the other a defensive barrier acting as noble protective custodians of the childrens' play area. Therefore if a spontaneously appearing truck were to drive at me while I was on that short stretch of pedestrian paving, there would be no way to dodge it.

 As it happened there was a truck in the park today, a vehicle which was being used to transport the tree branches that workers were trimming in order to castrate the powers of nature within the domesticated greenery. Just as I was on my fourth lap, the obese white truck parked its self squarely in between the two fences, completely blocking my way. Through my hazy sweat and fatigue filled vision, I vaguely saw the two blurred figures at the front of the truck signaling for me to go back ten meters or so and run across the completely open flat grassland from where the fence surrounding the basket ball court ended.

 As I recognized this attempt to navigate me, despite feeling worn by the exhaustion of physical movement I gritted my teeth in frustrated irritation. The concept of being moved at another's command fundamentally annoyed me, furthermore I had already run a good fifteen meters, to have to waste that non-refundable energy for the sake of a single lazy truck seemed like conceding a minor defeat to the world. Hence, dazedly mentally conjuring up something inspirational and courageous along the lines of "a true man must not giving up on his dreams and run on forwards whatever adversary might await" or something, I charged on towards the stubbornly stationary truck like a desperately unfit bull at a giant matador.

 Then, at the last possible second, I changed course ninety degrees to my left, grabbing hold of the bars protecting the childrens' play area and heaved myself swiftly up onto its precarious metal frame. During the run my brain had clearly suffered some natural disaster, possibly the disproportionate amount of sweat pouring out of my pores flowing into the cranium through my ears and flooding the brain, since it seemed to me at the time that the most logical course of action concerning the fence was to, using legs still shaking weakly from the exercise of a good jog, attempt to athletically vault over it. I leaped, my black running tie fluttering elegantly behind me then I caught the tip of my shoe on the fence and fell forward into the playground, face painfully making contact with the firm muddy ground.

 It also seemed that during this process (to be exact within the nanoseconds starting from my unfortunate loss of balance on the top of the fence to the graceless gravity dependent arc through the air as I fell, followed by the harsh introduction to the grassy ground) I pulled a muscle at the back of my leg which is why I have been hobbling around the house. A poor crippled victim of a truck related accident.

The Badminton Balance

 Every Wednesday, due to my school's policy of forcing some form of exercise on pupils whether they enjoy physically strenuous and largely pointless activities or not (like a slightly less potentially fatal version of conscription), I play badminton. Now, reader's who thought badminton to be entirely an issue of swinging the racket at roughly the right time in the right direction at the right speed and angle, may be surprised to learn that the most important aspect of playing badminton in my case is in fact, balance.
 Badminton is governed by balance: the balance of the weight and leverage of the racket in your hand, the balance of your body as you move across the court and most vitally, the balance between doing too little exercise to be criticized by the teacher and doing too much exercise to unknowingly join the rank of the "Lads" (A collection of muscle obsessed base humans, remarkable living fossil of what I imagine caveman society may have been like). For badminton is a slacker's sport, the last resort, the final safe haven, the one remaining defensive fort, the single hole in the net for those of a non-sporty persuasion and succeeding as a slacker presents its own set of challenges.
 First rule of slacking is that you never talk about slacking. Slack too obviously and you are placed on the teacher's warning list which entails coaching sessions with the teacher present, eyes peeled and glaring (A Hawk-Eye specifically there to judge whether your effort is "IN" or "OUT"), beside you. Hence you must always appear to be keenly playing badminton when the teacher is near. In short, to succeed you must become an agent; feign loyalty to sports but in your heart allow the passionate, though slightly damp and tired, fire of the slacker to burn. However be very cautious of accidentally succumbing to the enemy ideal, start genuinely taking badminton too seriously and the path to becoming a "Lad" opens ( A slippery downward path lubricated with vaseline, sweat and protein shakes).
 Become too good a deceptive agent and gradually what started as a feigned interest in badminton blossoms into genuine love of exercise. What was only a tiresome itch in your muscles becomes pain to be enjoyed. What was a friendly match played merely to humor the teachers in charge becomes a competitive battle to prove your powers as a man are superior to that of your opponent. Soon before you know it you'll be pumping weights in a gym sexually aroused by the very prospect of developing muscles but only capable of a one inch erection due to all the steroids you've taken.
 Therefore the path of the slacker is a hard one, perhaps the hardest. Working enough but ensuring not to work too much. Playing some sports but forever resisting the urge "to go gym" (That is the correct "Lad" term for going to a gym. As Underling Sheep succinctly put it, "There is too much muscular density in that sentence for any prepositions"). We slackers must find the Middle way, we are the Buddhists of exercise preaching the message of love, peace and always having at least ten minutes of sitting down after a minute of any remotely physically strenuous activity.