An Eye for an Ear

This is a noseclip. Seems pretty harmless doesn't it.

It seems as a kid I had to wear all sorts of abnormal devices. External braces and rubber bands for my teeth (all land-based humiliation), and peach colored rubber bands on my nose and cheeks (prestik in the ears) to me more of a basket case in the water.
Despite everything, I still enjoyed swimming a lot, and if I didn't I wouldn't still be doing it.

One of the worst things that happened to me while swimming was on a tour I once did with the Otters Swim Club to Port Elizabeth. We travelled by train, and it was a chooka chooka train. Me and some other kids put our heads out the window and me and some other kids got tiny iron filings in our eyes. These had to be removed with tweezers when we got to PE. The coach, once we told them our eyes were itchy and burning, screamed at us, "DON'T RUB YOUR EYES! YOU CAN DO IRREPARABLE DAMAGE TO THEM!". The tiny pieces of metal were not easy to reach. The procedure involved shining a very bright light into your eyes, and then inserting the ends of a tweezer onto the tiny pieces of metal caught in the retinal tissue. Not nice. It was a funny sight for those who saw us emerge from the hospital. About ten kids, a black eyepatch apiece, bundling onto a bus. It didn't really effect our swimming except that we were more sensitive to bright lights and a glare.

After these bumps and knocks, you tend not to worry to much about a crick in your neck or a cramp in your foot. So I guess it must be a good thing.