Critical Creig: A tale of two forklifts

CREIG P. SHERBURNE

When I was 15, my best friend was Dave. Dave and I rode bikes and rollerblades together a lot and were generally stupid hooligans. We didn't do anything bad, really, or illegal. We were just rambunctious, unruly and smelled bad.

Dave's biological mom was still in the picture at that time, but was on the periphery . Her boyfriend owned a trucking company in the Los Angeles area. Well, one weekend, Dave and I were to spend the week with his mom and "step-boyfriend ," as I thought of him, going to a Dodgers game and then enjoying a quiet weekend on the golf course on which the step-boyfriend lived. The weekend started on Friday afternoon. We went to the trucking company, from where we would all carpool together to the Dodger game. But as things go, there were loose ends for the step-boyfriend to tie up, last-minute instructions to give and other details to detail before we left.

Bored and 15, Dave and I were known to do some dumb stuff. Once, in class, we put glue on our pencil's erasers and then played swashbucklers until the teacher said, "you boys, cut it out."

So I suppose it was inevitable that he and I would remove the forks from two 5,000-pound forklifts, wrap the fronts in that shipping plastic and then play "bumper forklifts," while waiting for the step-boyfriend to conclude his business. The step-boyfriend , shockingly, didn't holler at us. When he saw what we were doing crashing the forklifts head-on into each other and then cackling with insane laughter he laughed at us and told us to knock it off. I'm pretty sure we left the forklifts where they stood as we loaded up to go to the fooseball game.

On that trip, we sort of accidentally on purpose fell into a swimming pool with our rollerblades on, broke a golf cart's windshield when we rolled it one evening and got kicked off the driving range despite the fact we'd put shirts with collars on over our Megadeth T-shirts .

Years later, I got a got a job in the shipping and receiving department at a company. The boss asked if I'd ever driven a forklift and I told him no. He pointed to the levers and pedals and stuff and sent me on my way. I smashed a hole through the wall with it, and he ordered a forkliftdriving video guide.

Anyway, Dave and I somehow survived that long weekend trip to tell the tale. No major injuries, even. Just bruises and skinned knees.

But at the gym the other night, I hurt myself lifting weights. I managed to lift 210 pounds, but 215 was too much, and I didn't have a spotter, and I tipped the weight off to the right, and now my right shoulder is hurt. I don't think I'm damaged, just hurt, and will need a week or so to heal up. My theory as to how it happened is easy: everything good needs friends to share it with. True, Dave and I never would have rolled the golf cart had we not been together, but I landed on top of Dave, thus avoiding major injury. In addition, I'm pretty sure bumper forklifts was his idea, but wrapping the front in plastic was my idea. You know, because a couple layers of plastic in between literally 10,000 pounds of steel is what saved the day.

But movies aren't as good alone. Cooking isn't as fun alone. It's why concerts are so much fun. We are social creatures, and when you've got a thousand people all gathered in one room for one thing, all focused on singing the same words to the same song, there's a connection that everybody can feel. Lifting weights alone sucks. That's a big reason that having a personal trainer works. In certain circles, having a personal trainer means you're vain and self-important , but I don't think that's necessarily the case. A personal trainer is there to push you to do more, to do better and to keep an eye on you so you don't hurt your shoulder.

Also, if you're paying for something, you're more likely to use it, more likely to show up and less likely to flake.

The same goes if you're working out with a friend, only friends generally cost less.

The moral of the story is this that my injury is 100-percent Christopher's fault because he moved to Ohio to earn his doctorate and wasn't there at the gym with me.

What a jerk.