Expat Jon takes on the world (well... Sweden)

I pride myself on my balance.  I regularly say that I've only fallen [enter low number here] times in my life.  If you don't count playing recreational sports, this is true.  I think it's because I find falling embarrassing.  It is!  All of your swagger and coolness deteriorates before you hit the ground.  They haven't yet created a smooth way to get up from a fall.  You can either lay there like you're hurt (if you're not), try to get up quickly (risking a second fall which drops your swag to nearly unrecoverable levels) or laugh at yourself.  I look at it as a loss.  Falling down is failure. Obviously it's not really failure.  It's a fact of life.  Gravity is fighting us for our entire existence on this planet.  And gravity is undefeated.  Nobody beats gravity.  Not even me!  Well, technically even when I'm standing upright, gravity is holding me down, but you get what I mean.  My cool needs to prevail. ...

    It all started when I was 23 years old.  I was still in the Air Force, living in Turkey and at the peak of my physical condition.  I was pretty proud of myself.  I was on the squadron basketball and softball teams.  I did PT with my squadron.  I had just got back from Iraq, and I had nothing but extra time on my hands to hit the gym extra hard (I also didn't have as much access to bad foods).  To me, I looked GOOD.  So one day I was doing my all-by-myself-in-my-dormroom flexes in the mirror when it hit me that I was missing something.  I would look at least 8% better if I got my nipples pierced!  That would put me over the top with my sexy!  My boy OX had them and he was quite the lady's man.  He was in great shape.  My other homie Marco had gotten one nipple done, but he passed out from the pain and didn't get the other one.  He had since removed it.  I'm sure it couldn't be that bad though.  And i...