He was at a pretty good clip. He was at a 7 minute mile with a lot left in his lungs and figured he had at least two more quarters at a six. At about 3/4's of mile number 2, feeling good and strong, he decided to go for a half mile at a 6. Maybe he got cocky, maybe it was the Billy Preston song Outta Space blaring in the earphones, or maybe it was the shapely coed that caught his eye passing down the hallway but his right foot got ever so slightly off track and caught the stationary part of the treadmill. With his fore strike hitting off the belt and with his heel hitting the fast moving belt meant he had to force his left foot to turnover quickly to hit the belt if he wanted to remain running and not be thrown from the treadmill in a heaping pile of embarrassment. It didn't work. His left foot came down on the track all right but with his right foot on both moving and nonmoving parts of the machine, it bent him into a pretzel on the belt and when his knee hit that 10 miles per hour belt, it threw him off the back like a BB from a slingshot. Embarrassment would have been one thing but being thrown from the back of the treadmill was only the beginning of his problems. Due to a shortage of space in the facility, the treadmills were all pushed to the back wall and only about two feet from the wall. Not nearly enough for code and not nearly enough to keep him from hitting said wall like a crash test dummy. Embarrassment is one thing, being bent like a pretzel and thrown against a wall at ten miles per hour is another, but here's the coup de grâce: after bouncing off the wall he headed back toward the moving, no wait, still fast moving track of the treadmill: as a veteran treadmiller he never attached the emergency strap. His cranium was the closest body part to said moving track. What happened next doesn't defy physics but it does defile physics. His head slammed the 10 mile per hour track and because the track was moving so fast and because there wasn't enough space between the treadmill and the wall, his head followed the path of the track and like a fridge magnet, pulled his head under the treadmill like a lifespan great white shark. Now because he was bent up like a Christmas morning Stretch Armstrong , his head did not hit the blistering track exactly centered, he was a little, pardon the technological jargon, caddy wampus. Yes, his noggin banged off the too-close-wall and went to the right. Plungered right under the treadmill and his freshly jostled mane caught the spinning wheel under the treadmill, and well, it scalped him. Tore his hair and skin right off the top of his head. Now here is where it gets nasty though. He was stuffed under that still moving treadmill like a marshmallow in a shot glass and his freshly scalped head was still rubbing against the 10 mile per hour wheel which, as you can guess, caused quite a stink. The good news is that before the smoke alarm went off some other patrons rushed over to shut off the treadmill. The bad news is that toupees are passé and the aroma of burning flesh isn’t good for the ole lunchtime workout.
Embarrassment is one thing, thrown from the catapult into the castle wall is one thing, having your head sucked under a moving treadmill fast enough for Dyson to litigate patent rights is one thing, but, and I'm paraphrasing coach Lombardi here: being scalped isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Wear the emergency strap!
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