A Lesson in Pain From the Runner Who Sprinted Dick-First Into A Pole

None of us will get through this life without pain. On a low you've got stubbed toes, slightly sliced fingertips when you're chopping an onion, teeth sensitive to ice water. Crank up the damage a bit and break a leg, an arm, have an appendix removed, get crumpled to half-death in a car accident. And that's just the physical pain: peel back the skin and howl at the moon with deep grief, heartbreak, frustration, depression and loss. Every day we spend alive is just trying to endure all the pains that are thrown at us from every possible angle. There is no escaping it, no pirouetting out of the way of it. We all, one way or another, will experience agony in our lifetimes.

Here's a man running dick-first into a pole.

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Now: lol. First up: lol. Let's just get that out of the way: lol. This is very funny. There's nothing unamusing about a man getting hurt on the dick, and I am a man who has been hurt on the dick many a time (long story)(a series of long stories), and though I don't enjoy it much at the time I have the ability to empathise with anyone who might have seen me getting hurt on the dick and go: yeah, it was probably funny when I got hurt on the dick, and/or balls. Like: there is nothing not funny about a man in a lazy, insouciant pose who gets full on pelted in the bollocks with a football, like out of nowhere, the dude going from 'smart casual' to 'doubled over in ball-based agony' in half a second flat, that is always funny, that is never not amusing, never. So we all concede that dudes getting hurt on the dick and/or balls is constantly funny1.

Any way back to the man in guy who ran dick-first into a pole:

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Some moments are honestly so succulent that you can dip into them like a warm bath, roll around in them, blow a handful of bubbles in the air, dip your head under the water and come back out gleaming, then climb out any, naked and pruned up, and still time hasn't really moved, hasn't progressed much. Example: here's the endless moment where the runner, who for simplicity's sake I'm going to have to refer to now as Extremely Dick Injuried Man, innocently hits round the corner on his way to marathon glory:

Thing is, right: we know what's coming. We see the pole. We know what's about to happen to his dick. But he doesn't know. Here is that perfect, primed moment of innocence, a man who's life and dick is about to change forever, but for now he's just focussing on his split times, for now he's just shaving hundredths of seconds of his PB in the search of—

And now he's in among the pack, and this is where is goes wrong now, because in his pursuit of a faster time (there's a social instinct that means pack runners tend to go faster, sort of spurring each other on, so even if you're running your own race then it tends to make sense to bunch and huddle together a bit, surrounded as you are by pacemakers) he ignores his surroundings, he assumes the two men in front of him will steer him right, and that's why he doesn't see it, doesn't see the orange and white iceberg to his dick's Titanic—

And then you've got the actual moment of impact, which is so brutal because his body knows what's happening before his brain does, I mean like you've got this moment where he puts his hands up to stop the impact that has already mushed his balls to juice, then he's cowed over with his hands on his leg and his face says, 'I don't know what is happening,' his face is saying, 'I don't know why this is happening to me', he does not know why he is staring at the floor and his dick is on fire, his brain cannot process the information yet, it is protecting him from the truth the only way it knows how—

Once, when I was eight, I was walking backwards through a wood – I was and still am a show off – and I fell absolutely arse over shoulders over a small low log. And as I hit the ground – neck first, then head, spine slumped over me, legs in the air, I essentially did an agonising backwards roll – my auntie, who was walking with me at the time, said, 'Ooh, watch out'. This was useless information to me at the time. But it sort of shows you how the brain processes trauma: slowly, later than the body, the body knows pain before the mind does, there's nothing you can do, you can't think yourself upright again, you can't puzzle your bollocks back together after running dick-first into a pole. All you can do is watch helplessly as the most tender parts of your body crumple under pressure. Truly, pain is the worst thing about being alive.

Still, lol:

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I'd like to add a shout out to the commentator, here, who I do not think is helping in any way at all. There is this curious human reaction to watching others' experience pain, and that is to seek audible confirmation that they are alright and not dead, that they did not run dick-first into a pole, for example, so much that their heart stopped beating and they died, and I personally find, in moments of pain when every nerve in my body is screaming in agony and all my brain can do is ding like a bell as all the blood rushes around my body w/ a pulse of adrenalin, that someone getting in my face and shouting, "ARE YOU ALRIGHT? ARE YOU? ARE YOU ALRIGHT? JOEL? ALRIGHT MATE? ARE YOU ALRIGHT? TELL ME YOU'RE OKAY. ARE YOU ALRIGHT?" is actually the worst thing in the world, worse that murder war and death, worse than the actual pain I am already experiencing. And I have absolutely no idea what the commentator dude here is saying, but I don't think his yelp of sympathetic pain and then really loudly saying something to the now dickless dude who is buckled over in mid-marathon agony here is exactly helping.

We must, as ever, try to come together and learn lessons from the mistakes of others here, namely the Belgian marathon dude who I presume is currently undertaking emergency dick repair surgery and curses ever taking up running as a hobby, and those lessons are this: if something is clearly signposted and painted white and orange, perhaps don't run into it; don't run into anything dick-first, try and lead at least with a thigh, perhaps a low swinging arm; do not trust anyone else to steer you and your dick away from poles, we are all alone in this world, we are all responsible only for ourselves, keep your eyes open and be dick-aware at all times; and when you see someone in pain and you for whatever reason have a microphone on you don't yell "OOOOH" into that microphone then precede to berate that person while they die. Life is pain, my people. We all got to work together if we're going to come through this.

@joelgolby

1. Sidebar I did get called a 'cuckpool' in a comment on VICE dot com a few weeks back and I haven't quite been able to stop thinking of that parr ever since, I mean what is that, what does that even mean, but then also I suppose a simple criticism of me saying dudes getting pelted in the bollocks or dick is funny might be that I am in fact some sort of man-hater and that this opinion comes from a place of hatred for men, and you know the sort of person who would make this accusation – kind of dude who read four chapters of The Game before giving up because it's a bit wordy but nevertheless going to a local bar alone in a Boy Georgesque fedora then went home after nursing an Old Fashioned for four hours and talking in that time to zero women to boot up his gaming computer and start a 4Chan thread about how all women are secretly whore bitch sluts and why Age of Empires I is clearly superior to II – and anyway I just want to fend that off at the gate and say that dudes getting pelted in the testicles being funny actually comes from a very politically neutral space where I just find the agony of others amusing, please don't call me a cuckpool in the comments again, I don't even know what it means but it hurt me— ↩

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