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I got my haircut on Friday. Normally, I�m pretty regular with my hair-cutting requests and I have them use a 1 � guard on the sides and in the back and then trimmed pretty short on top. Well, I decided to go a little shorter this time around and asked them to use a 1 guard. I enjoy the new look and you can essentially see my scalp and I look like I just joined the military (don�t ask, don�t tell). My hair is so short that you can easily see the scar in the back of my head that was due to a gymnastics injury. This story completes round 3 of �Eric takes a tumble,� which I said over and over again that I would post. I seemed to have been distracted for quite some time and now it is time to keep my end of the bargain and tell the story that has left a permanent notch in the back of my head.

The story begins my senior year of college and me wanted to do something physical at school. I was talking to some of my friends about my former career in gymnastics and how I missed competing, etc, and that there was no real way to get back into it since it has been so long, there�s no college team at the University of Maryland, and even if there was one, I wouldn�t be good enough to make the team.

I saw a flyer on the foreign language building, where I spent the majority of my class time since I was a French major, that announced open call for students wanting to join a group at school called Gymkana. This was an extra-curricular gymnastics group on campus. It was calling for anyone who wanted to join to include those who had done competitive gymnastics in the past. I took this as a sign and wrote down the location of practice and told myself that the next day, I would go and see what this was all about.

I got there the following day after all my classes and asked the head coach what exactly was entailed by joining this group. I informed him that I used to compete and was looking for possibly working out with them and getting back into some sort of decent shape. I hadn�t ballooned or anything, but nothing quite gave me as much satisfaction as the workouts I used to get doing gymnastics. He told me that if I wanted to I could warm myself up and then touch a few pieces of apparatus to see if this was something I wanted to do.

I warmed up to the best of my ability, trying to recall the routines that we used to do back in the day. I brought some gym clothes with me and decided that since floor used to be my best event, it was probably the best idea to start there and then work my way to other pieces of equipment. I didn�t have my grips anymore so high bar and rings were out of the question. They had a tumbling strip, which amounted to a 8�x 60� spring loaded floor strip that had a huge crash mat at the end of it. The tumbling strip was about 5 feet off the ground, raised up by a wooden platform. The platform was about 4 � feet tall, then there were the springs, a layer of plywood, a layer of foam core, more plywood, and finally 2 inch section mats that provided the tumbling surface. The crash mat at the end of the tumbling strip run way was used for two purposes. You could tumble onto the mat on the elevated tumbling strip, or there was a mini-trampoline at the other end of it. I�m not sure if I�ve painted this picture very clearly, but essentially one person would tumble onto the crash mat and then someone would use do some sort of flipping action onto the crash mat from the mini-trampoline. There were several people using each piece of equipment so once one person had tumbled onto the mat, the next person in line would have to wait until one person from the mini-trampoline line had taken their turn and landed on the mat. It was like planes waiting to take turns landing; only they were landing onto the ground from opposite directions.

That was extremely lengthy, but provides the necessary backdrop for the incident.

I hadn�t tumbled in the longest time, if you don�t count having to do back flips as party tricks when you�ve had too much to drink at parties. My muscle memory was essentially gone and I knew damn well and good that I could only do basic things and a few of the more difficult skills that I had in my tumbling repertoire. I did some basic tumbling, landed on my feet most times and was egged on by some of the other people there to do things that I used to be able to do but didn�t trust myself at that moment to attempt.

I moved from the tumbling line to the mini-trampoline line. A greater audience had started to form since I was the new kid in town and most of the gymnasts there had only done semi-serious competition or had never been in a gym before and were doing this so they could have fun bouncy time on the trampoline. There were a couple of guys there that looked as if they had done some serious stuff in the past and had taken it upon themselves to get in line with me and snub me. I had no idea this sort of attitude was going to come up here since I figured we were all adults and it wasn�t like we were trying to make the Olympic team or anything. This was for fun; I was here to have a good time, and not to get injured. I wouldn�t be telling the story if that was, in fact, all that had happened.

I started doing things that I probably should not have been doing and it all went downhill from there. We were doing double front flips, which I never had any problem with before but since my air sense was practically gone, this probably wasn�t the wisest move on my part. After that the twisting started. We were doing double front flips with a half twist on the second flip so that you landed with your back facing the people on the tumbling strip. Well, I did a few and realized that they were not as difficult as I thought they would be considering that I was about 4 inches taller and probably 40 pounds heavier than I had been. I decided on my next turn that this was going to be my last one and then I was going to call it a day. I took off on the mini-trampoline, noticed that my angle of take off was pretty sharp, and I was traveling too far forward than I should have been. My face at this very moment was probably priceless and I did the double front, did the half turn, and realized that I was at the very end of the crash mat, about to land on my back. My feet hit the mat, I rolled back and my head managed to find the edge of the plywood that was making up part of the tumbling strip platform. I heard a huge crack, and then passed out for a couple of seconds. I got up, put my hand behind my head and although I had been sweating, there was too much liquid back there, even if it was oppressively hot. Everyone came running to see if I was ok, and luckily I was still in shock at the time so I felt no pain at this moment, just absolute embarrassment. The back of my head was gushing blood and I wanted to smoke. They never offered to take me anywhere; they just gave me some advil and told me that I probably shouldn�t drive. I had to call my mother to ask her to come and pick me up in College Park, MD, which is about 40 minutes from our house in Annapolis. She asked me what was going on and I told her in brief what had happened. She came running down, saw the back of my head and decided that I probably needed stitches even though the last thing I wanted to do was to go to the doctor. Since we had to drive back to Annapolis anyway, we went to Nighttime Pediatrics since they �take Adults too!� I got on the table, laid down on my stomach and was told my some quack that I needed staples in the back of my head, which look exactly like they sound. There was a quick shot of painkiller in my head and then she went to work on my scalp with the sterilized version of a Swingline. I got some Tylenol-3 with codeine and we left for home. This was also the same day my grandparents had flown into town from California and my poor sister had to entertain them while my mom was out saving my dumbass.

Needless today, I have not stepped back into a gym again. I�m sticking with weight lifting and running�and the occasional alcohol induced back flip (which I�m surprised hasn�t resulted in any injuries *knock on wood*)

I apologize for this length, un-funny entry, although the staples in my head did look pretty cool and luckily my hair was long enough in the back to cover them up so I didn�t have to explain the story to everyone and their fucking mom who sat behind me in class.

e.