Are You OK?

    How did I become a chin-up bar swinging addict? Simple, I found that swinging from it was extremely relaxing. Now this discovery didn't come right away, mind you. It developed after I approached adulthood and the need for distancing myself from adult-like problems looming ahead became necessary. Friends no longer were knocking on my door as they once had done and I felt isolated. I had graduated from Dental Tech school and held a job at a local Dental Tech laboratory. My fervid dreams of becoming another famous bodybuilder like Steve Reeves had proven futile despite my furious weight training. So in order to relieve the tension, I started to swing from my chinning bar and meditate.

     Well, the day of the incident I am about to describe, was rather dismal. You see, we lived on the 11th floor of a the Christopher Columbus Homes Housing Projects in Newark New Jersey. There was a thunderstorm that day, and the wind was relentlessly hurling the rain against my bedroom’s window in sheets. My parents were watching TV and arguing as usual. So I decided to swing on my chinning bar to alleviate stress.

     In case you are wondering, here 's how my routine went. I had installed this chinning-bar on the narrow, apartment hallway without securing it with screws as was recommended. Instead, I trusted the lateral pressure exerted by my weight when I hung from the center to secure it. So when feeling stressed out, I'd confidently jump and grab the bar in a palm-forward grip, and hang there for a few moments in order to limber up. I'd follow that up with a set of ten-rep chin-ups in order to get the blood flowing. Then using my legs to gain momentum by extending them forward and backwards repeatedly, I would begin to swing.

     I would gradually increase the speed and angle of the swing until nothing more was needed to keep me going except a slight pendulum swaying movement of the lower body. Sort of how you do at the playground swings, but without the benefit of seat and sturdy chains.

     Now, these weren't just little swings. No siree Bob! Little swings just wouldn't cut the mustard. These swings would bring my whole one-hundred-and thirty-five pound, sweat-drenched body perpendicular with the floor one way, and then perpendicular with the floor the other way. Actually, my confidence in the stability of that chinning bar was so great, that the only thing that prevented me from actually going full circle as they do in gymnastics, was the apartment's low ceiling. Otherwise, as far as I was concerned-there was no limit. Just me, the Rock-of-Gibraltar, the unmovable bar, and glorious sensation of freedom. Once submerged in that rhythm, nothing else existed. Parents, friends neighborhood nor city. All became an unpleasant, diaphanous unreality to which I didn't want to return.

     Oh! I would shut my eyes and enter this transcendental, meditative state of pristine inner serenity, unlike anything I'd known before. There were no longer any frustrations, no irrational hopes of transforming myself into a hulking figure overnight via bodybuilding. No scheming cunning fellow telling me that I should frenetically superset my arms into hypertrophy, or that I should purchase concentrated protein-formulas which never did me any damned good. In short, for the duration of the swinging, I would be finally free of all problems and concerns.

     So hoist on my own petard, that boring, brooding, misty ominous day, I jumped up, and grabbed the bar confidently as gymnasts do when about to begin their routine. After the initial warm-up of chin-ups, I was soon swinging along at a good clip, about two swings per every three seconds. Of course, my parents had asked about the safety of my antics. But I had confidently assured them that the bar was absolutely stable.

     "Are you sure that thing isn't going to come off that wall?" my father had asked several times before, while standing beneath the chinning bar, and giving it his patented frowning, opened-mouthed, suspicious look. He had an uncanny ability to assess danger, and his mysterious low, half-whispered tone of voice, which was fit for a One Step Beyond intro part, dramatized that ability even more. He never insisted in having his way though. He would just make his pronouncement and watch. That was his modus operandi, as he once demonstrated when my mother had insisted that we all ride the Coney-Island Roller Coaster. As we stood there, the coaster went by above us at a rail-rattling, ear-shattering breakneck speed and took a hairpin passenger-screaming curve. My father had watched it with that same opened-mouth stare that he was giving at my chinning bar.

     "What guarantee do you have that thing isn't going to fly off the rails on one of those tight turns?" ...he had asked, and then vehemently refused to accompany us in what he considered madness.

     Well, on that occasion, he had been right. My mother and I almost did get killed. All he said afterwards was "I told you so." Another time he warned her about mopping while wearing high heels on a waxed floor. She didn't listen, and a few minutes later, she was sprawled out flat on her back. So when he looked at my chinning bar that way, I momentarily felt ill-at-ease but quickly recovered. I assured him that he had nothing to worry about. I even confidently offered to do a few chin ups to demonstrate.

"Well, OK!" he said.” But it’s hard to believe that thing is sturdy! Is it screwed to the wall?"

"No but-"

     "What's holding it up?" he asked, staring at it as if it had been some unnatural, unearthly phenomenon.

     "See, when you put weight on it like this!" I jumped and hung from it with a palms forward grip "...the sides expand and grip the walls. The more weight, the stronger it's anchored!" I had replied with smug confidence.

     He nodded in what I understood as awe, or acceptance of my explanation, said nothing more, and then walked way. So I assumed I had convinced him as much as I felt convinced. Unfortunately, conviction can't substitute for clear reasoning, and I was forgetting one very important factor in the equation. True, the downward-weight certainly did increase the bar's grip on the walls. But by swinging, I was introducing another force for which the bar's design wasn't intended. It was a horizontal one created by my swinging, and one which added nothing to the bar's grip. Worse still, it added stress when the bar was weakest, at the moment when my momentum nullified the downward pull, and shifted all my weight horizontally against the bar's grip. So what I was doing was tantamount to an airplane-designer taking wingspan, lift, wind-velocity and drag into consideration, but leaving out gravity. It was a recipe for disaster. But hey? My father didn't see the flaw. Otherwise he would have pointed it out I assume.

     So whenever he saw me swinging, he seemed to be assuming that all was perfectly OK. After all, his son, the fanatical bodybuilder, surely knew what the hell he was doing. Right? What? With all those hundreds of bodybuilding magazines cluttering the closets, years of posing confidently before mirrors while using such words as abs, biceps, triceps, deltoids, pectorals, and fanatically lugging weights for the last six years? Surely all the sweating, groaning and reading and struggling had provided their only son with the necessary wisdom not to seriously injure himself. Right? So if they heard me swinging that day, they probably gave it no further thought other than "Well, guess he's swinging again." and went back to their TV-watching and arguing routine. In fact, I could clearly hear them in the living-room chatting and watching TV as if completely oblivious to my extreme simian-like kamikaze antics.

     Anyway, all appeared to be going well, that gloomy, dismal day. Each swing was a triumph of my willpower over nature, as gravity was temporarily rendered null. My future gradually became a shimmering emerald oasis in the desert of the present, offering secure shelter. The gilded horizon beyond it, with its lofty gem-studded silver turrets and spires were entrancing. On it went. One positive image after another, in a never-ending soothing panorama of limitless possibilities. I was in full control of my destiny. I would attain all things that I longed for and nothing could ever stand in my way. The girl of my dreams, that ever-illusive tantalizing scornful wilo wisp, would stop rejecting me. In fact, she would accept my marriage proposal. I could see her lovingly gazing up at me while dressed in her white wedding-gown after having said "I do!" Giving me the sweet kiss she had so gruffly denied me during all those years, and offering a heart that had been unreceptive to the desperate beating of my own.

     I'd also soon be that elusive majestic Adonis with the fifty-inch chest and the eighteen-inch arms that had been denied me all these years. I'd win the Mister Universe title. I envisioned myself posing before a boisterous crowed of admiring spectators, news-reporter, camera-lights flashing as I was handed the Mr. Universe Trophy by the illustrious Joe Weider himself..

     There was still time. Of course there was. Nothing could stand in my way. In my delirious exaltation, it never occurred to me that if the bar lost its grip on the hallway walls, I would go flying feet-first either backwards toward my parent's room and crashing into the bureau mirror and landing on my face, or else I would go flying feet-first straight down the narrow hallway toward the living room at approx. 40 MPH, maybe permanently taking out one of my parents in the process if they happened to be in my way, and landing on my back.

     I mean, getting whacked by a flying one-hundred and thirty-five pound young muscular body going at that speed isn't exactly conducive to good health, and seeing that both my parents were not big people, man-slaughtering one of them via flying into them was a very real possibility.

     But never mind all that. Never mind also that the bar was designed to take downward stress and not the lateral one I was putting on it. Or that my swinging was tantamount to standing there and repeatedly whacking the chinning-bar with a hammer sideways each time that I went perpendicular. To me, the swinging was the thing.

     So since all was perfectly OK with my universe, as far as my opinion went, I continued my swinging routine. Eyes shut, and sweat-drenched hands tightly and confidently coiled around the stainless-steel bar, I could feel my body arch forward, reach perpendicular face toward the ceiling as I swung backwards, and gloriously swing back in a semi-circular motion- face toward the ceiling, bulging chest and shoulder muscles in full synchronization, muscular legs extended s, ripped abs glistening under the hallway light. I was a mighty human planet in Zen-orbit and the bar was my sun. I was mighty Tarzan and the small two-bed roomed housing-project apartment was my private personal jungle.

     As I continued in my delirious swinging on that day, my parents' rising and falling idle chatter and occasional spats, along with the lashing of the torrential rain on my bedroom window. gradually faded into nothing in the euphoria of the moment. I was in unison with the universe and there was no boring day, no silent un-knocked door indicating loss of social popularity and possible long-lasting isolation. No rejection from the love of my dreams, no menacing future or disturbing past, no materialistic ambition or desperate need to upset the placid, waveless, glass-surfaced lake that had become my mind. It seemed as if I had attained what some might have classified as Nirvana. despite my total ignorance of Buddhism. Such was the euphoric nature of my activity.

     Well, I had been in that gloriously euphoric state for approx. fifteen minutes, when it suddenly happened. I had successfully finished the face-down perpendicular-to-floor part of my swing and returned triumphantly to vertical face upwards when the bar decided to release its grip on the walls. So instead of stopping at the height of my forward thrust, as I confidently expected, I felt myself suddenly free of all restrictions. In short, I was flying through the air while holding onto the chinning bar with both hands in a life or death grip.

     Such was my airborne velocity, that I flew almost the full length of the apartment hallway from next to my parents’ bedroom all the way to the living-room’s doorless entrance, a good twenty feet or more, before gravity finally kicked in. The flight itself, of course, wasn't unpleasant, except for the sudden realization that I had screwed up and was about to experience some serious physical pain and embarrassment.

     But that moment was very brief. Very swiftly lost altitude and suddenly slammed the base of my neck, with the full brunt of 135 pounds, against the hallway’s carpeted, cement floor. As if a spectator, I heard myself scream in agony when my right elbow hit the floor as well followed by my back and hips and finally my legs. Of course, fully confident in my muscularity, I attempted to rise and laugh it off. But to my horror I could’t move. In fact, I couldn’t even talk. All I could do was lie there and listen to the patter of my parents' feet rushing in my direction. Finally they were standing over me.

     "What happened? What happened?" they kept asking.

     Shouldn't it have been obvious? Of course, what they really meant was:

     "How could you be so dumb?"

     However, no parent would say that to his or her child when his or her eighteen-year-old man-like child is grimacing in pain on the floor. So I guess that "What happened?" was the best next thing to calling me stupid they could think of.

     Actually, whatever they had chosen to say at that moment, would not have meant much to me since I was too occupied with the horrible pain in my elbow, neck, and back to really give a hoot. Anyway, in order to conserve some of my teenage dignity, struggled to get on my feet. But to my utter consternation, I couldn't move my legs. But even more frustrating, I was having trouble moving my head and even responding to questions. All I heard myself do as if from a distance was utter this weird gurgling moan.

     Permanent paralyzes didn't even cross my mind at that time, as it does now when I remember that accident. Maybe because I had a sense of invulnerability so characteristic of youth that causes so many to do daredevil things such as that. You know, the it-can-happen-to-others-but-never-to-me attitude.

     Fortunately, I hadn't broken my or my back neck or any bones. Maybe all the fanatical weightlifting I had done under the goading propaganda of that Joe Weider fellow, had somehow protected me from a more serious injury. Who knows? Then finally, after about five- minutes, which seemed like an eternity to me, I started to come around.

     "Can you get up?" my mother asked worriedly.

     "I can't move mah legs ma! I can't move mah legs!" I heard myself mutter.

     "Help me pick him up!" she angrily said to my father who had been standing there repeating:

      "I told him that thing wasn't safe, but he wouldn't listen."

      Yeah right!

     Well, after briefly struggling with my dead weight, they finally wrestled me to my unsteady feet and led me to my bedroom arms around their shoulders, legs half dragging, head limp to one side, moaning and still staggering from the impact, and deposited me on my bed after making sure I was reasonably OK. Then they went back to their TV and interminable bickering.

     Outside, in the darkening, stormy, evening, the asphalt-paved project playground remained empty and a cold, while an ill-humored winter-wind still rattled the widows. From my room's wall, in the semi darkness, an emerald, alabaster luminescent crucifix emanated its comforting light. While somewhere in the nebulous distance, or maybe in some deep recess of my mind, I thought I heard the theme-song for the Twilight Zone.