Pain Train

It is very interesting to see how people deal with physical pain differently. There is a guy on the East High soccer team that Juice and I were laughing about cause he always mumbles cuss words under his breath for like 3 minutes while he deals with the pain. Some people cry (mostly women and kids, hopefully no men). Some people laugh because it feels so good. Others scream. I have tried to make pain one of the joys of my life. When I was younger, I was kind of a wuss. I, like most kids, would cry when I got hurt, but I am sure that I cried a little more than the regular kid. One day in ~6th grade, I was playing basketball with some friends and I jammed my finger. It hurt real bad and I initially thought that I was going to cry cause that was what I did as a kid when things hurt really bad and I didn't want to cry in front of my friends. Then something changed in my head and I thought to myself, why would I cry because of physical pain. It just didn't make any sense to me and now it still doesn't. I don't see why you would cry from getting hurt physically.
Pain has almost become a game now for me and some of my friends. In high school, "pain train" was started in Ralph's pool. Back flops and belly flops came by the dozens. Belly flops never did hurt too much, but a good back flop would sting and send that wonderfully warm sensation deep into the lower back. After that things escalated. A summer night at Laird Park, we were hanging out and somebody had a skinny yellow plastic bat. Pete was swinging it and I told him to swing it right across my bare back. He asked me if I was serious and my response was that if we swung it, I would take it. He got this look in his eye and I knew that he was going to swing it, but first he asked again if it was alright that he swing it. I told him the same thing. He asked permission again and while asking full on swung that skinny bat across my upper back. Oh baby, the intensity was heaven. After a lap around Laird park, I felt great.
Ralph and I have plenty of stories from Applegate's class about pain train. Pain has become like a drug, but we try to keep it reasonable, nothing like what is done in Jackass or anything like that, just reasonable things.
I missed pain train so much that I started it on my mission once I found someone who was man enough to join me. Elder Walker and I were in the MTC together and we finished out our missions together in the same house. In our last two transfers we decided to get to know the Korean culture better through our own study of 태관도 (tai kwon do). While we were mock fighting we hit shins and the pain was blissful. We started laughing and decided to smack shins again. Shins are so sensitive but we recalled a Jean Claude Van Damm movie where he kicks down a tree after beating it with his shins over and over so we were determined to desensitize our shins. Every night we would have shin kick offs. One person would hold out their leg while the other person swung and slammed his shin into the other guys shin. It was too much fun. Everyone got hurt everytime around. The key was to try to find the same spot everytime on the other guy. Elder Walker and I did this a little too much cause it got to the point where I could kick a door frame with my shin and it didn't hurt that much.
The shin kicking only happened between Elder Walker and I, our companions never joined us even though one was a huge O-line man who grew up in Orem getting in fights with Polynesians and the other was a huge lumberjack from north-western Canada and was a professional arm wrestler. Well finally one night they broke. The Orem elder broke first and decided to go against me. I held my leg out first and he struck and I could tell that he was hurt. Now it was my turn. He held out his leg and I struck him good with my shin. He went one more round with me and then gave up. Proud in my victory I went after the other missionary and he tried to avoid my kicks. I kind of got him and he got mad so he came swinging with his leg. I stuck my leg out for him to hit and he swung and hit and then in anger swung and hit again and in anger swung again but this time I didn't wait for him to hit my leg, I swung up into his leg and our shins smacked so hard I still laugh when I think about it now. He immediately dropped to the ground and bowed out. In one night I had taken out two giants by my solid shins. As I look back on it now, I am certainly glad that none of us broke our legs because that would have been beyond embarassing to have to go to the mission president and tell him that story.
Now for pain train I keep it to lifting weights and conditioning with the soccer team. Anytime I can see Ralph hurting in the weight room I know that we have to do a little more. And anytime we can run hills in soccer we run 'em. Seems a little more healthy than shin kicking but I don't know if it is as satisfying but it'll do for now.