We live in a city that has begun to infantilize adults in an effort to get them to pay attention to their health, whether that means opening adult playgrounds or offering adult recess classes. But eventually, this back-to-the-schoolyard attitude was going to lead to some casualties—and the first may be Brooklyn resident Jonathan Stock, a personal trainer who is suing the city after he injured himself falling from a boulder in a Manhattan park. "Just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean I don’t get to explore the world, too," said the adult who climbed onto a rock in a park and made a boo-boo on his bod and now expects the city to pay for his folly.
Stock, 32, was hanging out in Hudson River Park last June with friends when the allure of the rock formation became too much to resist. Despite it not being an adult playground, or even a children's playground, Stock decided to take things to the limit (the personal trainers' oath maintains that taking things to the limit and/or the max is expected at all times) and scale the summit of the towering, um, 10-foot-tall rock.
"I ran and jumped it, and I pretty much knew exactly what happened right away. I tried to stand up and fell back down on my face completely," he told the Post. Stock ended up having surgery on his Achilles heel, and was forced to stay indoors for weeks, missing out on precious summer hours of pushing the boundaries of polite society through physical endurance and feats.
Alas, Stock was seduced and abandoned by a sweet slab of granite. "It just invites you or anybody with any athletic sense to give it a try,” said his attorney, Andrew Spinnell. Stock is seeking unspecified damages, although he might be better served channeling his energies toward a middle school-level climbing class.
