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He was going to do it. He was going to use one of the school computers, crack open a browser window and slide the cursor over to the address bar, type in "www.google.com", hit the enter button (maybe twice, depending on the computer sometimes the enter key could be kind of "sticky" and unresponsive, though it was rarely as bad as the space bars ended up being...for various reasons that Colin just refused to think about) and then begin a search on strong men. Why? Because his roommate wanted to be one (very badly) and because he found it interesting that a boy younger than he was by a year could look look like he should have been out of high school by several years. Was it just that Bjorn was one of those guys that would always have looked older? Was it because he was Swedish? Or was it just because all the working out and pumping iron had somehow magically given the Swede massive amounts of testoterone? Colin was absolutely going to find out if he could.

Sure, he could have used the laptop that he'd gotten for his last birthday, but he didn't want Björn to see what he'd been up to - he could have emptied the cache and dumped his history, but it was more that Colin didn't want to have the Swede pop back into their shared room and see him looking up this sort of stuff! That's why he was suffering through the use of the extremely slow, questionably clean (okay, there was no question the keyboards were home to all sorts of nasty germs, gunk and crud) and ultimately frustrating school computers.



Hours later, Colin had spent more time than he thought possible going from wikipedia entry to wikipedia entry and page to page. There was a veritable ocean of information reguarding strongmen and their "way of life". Oh, excuse him - "Strength Athletes". That was, apparently, the politically correct term for those that wanted to be, considered themselves or just were strongmen. Sure, it was interesting...but it was absolutely not for him. Bjorn could keep it and Colin would support and cheerlead or whatever like a good friend, but...he had absolutely zero interest in being an "exhibitor of strength (before strength sports were codified into weightlifting, powerlifting etc., becoming actual athletic competitions) or circus performers of similar ilk who displayed feats of strength such as the bent press (not to be confused with the bench press, which did not exist at the time), supporting large amounts of weight held overhead at arm's length, steel bending, chain breaking, etc." as the damned wikipedia entry said.

He did find it intersting that there was a difference in the nineteenth century strongman and the twentieth century strongman; Colin even wondered which version Bjorn considered himself but then thought better of asking. Likely his friend didn't know or didn't care...but then again, the guy liked to tote that massive weight cart around...so he was probably part of the more eclectic crowd that settled in during the late 20th century. Question answered!

The dancer leaned back in his chair, eyeing the still glowing computer screen thoughtfully as he rocked back and forth the way that most teens tended to when put into a chair that could be set back on two legs (dangerous? a little. comfortable? hell yes!). Reading about the different exercises, about the associations and all of that stuff...well, it was just too much for a single afternoon! At least now he knew more about what Björn wanted to do with his life than before; hell, he might even have been able to carry on a reasonable conversation with the Swede about some of the newer Strongmen! Magnus Ver Magnusson (whom Björn had already mentioned a time or three, along with the infamous - and apparently incomparable - Charles Atlas)...Jouko Ahola, Dominic Filious, Glenn Ross, that Sigmarsson guy and so many others that Björn no doubt idolized and/or followed in his quest to become "one of them". Colin could applaude his new friend's dedication...it was something that he himself understood very well, considering just how into the world of Dance that he himself was.

"I don't think that I'll ever catch Björn checking up on dance like I did Charles Atlas." Such a funny thought! The blond started chuckling to himself, then laughing at the hilarity of such a situation. It took him a good five minutes to calm back down - a sign that it was absolutely time to do something a little less "weighty"...and definitely time to wash his hands, return to his room and use his own computer! His skin felt like it wanted to crawl off his body to soak in bleach for a year!

Never again would he use one of those computers without something like a gun pressed to his temple. Never. God only knew how often the boys of Hillworth had choked the chicken onto the keyboards of those "shared" machines - grooooooss.

Colin got up and immediately went to wash his hands before heading back to his room, tunelessly whistling a jaunty tune he'd danced to a few days previous.