I can remember being given an Action Man Doll as a small child. I guess I was probably around six or seven years old at the time. I was always fascinated by the physique of the doll. I used to think when I grow up I want to look like that (maybe just as well I hadn’t been given a Barbie Doll or life could have turned out a whole lot different!). I come from a pretty weedy family really, generally more academic than sporting. I would always push myself in PT classes though. I always wanted to be the one to do the most press-ups, chins etc. I loved to play sport and was into athletics. It was quite a few years later that I got into the Iron Game though. We had moved from a fairly big city to a small town. Now I have some ethnic blood in me but the town we moved to had hardly ever seen anybody whiter than driven snow, so I stood out a fair bit. I got a fair amount of verbal abuse and some physical, although I could look after myself and would never back down. One summer break my buddy joined the local Gym and got keys so he could get in anytime. I would have been just seventeen at the time and couldn’t afford the membership fees. Anyway he says just come along and train during the day, there are no committee members around till evening and nobody will question you. So we spent the best part of ten weeks training almost every day and had a few narrow escapes from being rumbled by committee members. We didn’t have much clue and had no idea about over training and rest days. Young, dumb and full of natty I proceeded to blow up over the summer, relying largely on stealing milk from doorsteps to supplement my diet. I remember being in the Gym one day towards the end of summer. I was doing dips with a Dumbbell suspended between my legs when a gang of six or seven Skinheads wandered in mouthing off and with shirts removed. These were the ones who used to give me all the shit. Generally I had seen them around in ones and twos but never all together like this. It’s fair to say I was shitting myself! I just carried on pumping out the dips. My blood vessels were bursting through my skin and sweat was pouring off me. I had done all I could do plus some more due to the added adrenalin. I started doing something else and was waiting for the onslaught. In fact it never happened. Within a couple of minutes all the mouthing off had finished. They put their shirts on a left sheepishly. A few days later I was talking to a girl who they had been talking to in a bar later that day. They asked her if they had seen me around recently. Apparently I looked like a “fucking animal”! They said they had been that embarrassed at their own physiques that they had left in shame LOL. Thirty two years later I still live in the same town and I can pretty much say from that day to this nobody has ever fucked with me again.