GOOD TIMES
Creak, don’t croak The human body never ceases to amaze me, even my own. Not that it’s a work of sculpted art or anything – certainly not with 66 years of oft-hard Paul living chipping away at K andarian its efficacy and durability, and not even when I was in the more sculpturally amenable years of my youth when I couldn’t be bothered to keep in shape. Now I’ve joined a gym I sometimes get to (the definition of “sometimes” being very flexible, unlike me). I still play ice hockey once a week as a goalie, wearing 30-plus pounds of gear designed to stop the puck and make me sweat like a man wrapped in tin foil on the equator. And I take walks in the woods every chance I get, thus far not getting badly lost enough to warrant a full out search party and marveling, as I get older and more, shall we say, “prostate challenged,” how the entire forest is my scenic bathroom. But it’s amazing the beating we put on the body, physically and emotionally, and how, like the Timex ads of old, it keeps on ticking. It’s just that at my age, the ticking is much louder. Sort of like holding an amplification device up to a bowl of freshly milked Rice Krispies. Snap, crackle, and pop, that hurts! And it’s remarkable how inconsistent various maladies can be at times, which may or may not have anything to do with aging. But I was in Mexico recently, drinking bottled water the resort promised was fresh but which, face it, could have just been refilled from a rusty faucet down at the local garaje. I fared reasonably well, avoiding fullscale Montezuma’s Revenge, but the last day and a half, I felt like I was coming down with something, stuffiness, a bit of a cough, just an overall malaise, but livable. Then I got on a plane for home, aka a flying Petri dish. Planes are famous as
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incubators of airborne and surface viruses. It’s like sitting in a flying tube stuffed with sniffling, sneezing, snotty kindergarteners and trying not to breathe. Honestly, you have less of a chance contracting something horrible if you nursed on hanging subway straps. So on a plane, it’s inevitable that whatever you got going on icky-wise will enter the icky stratosphere once they vapor lock the doors and entomb you in a flying bacterial swamp.
I kid you not, an hour and a half into the flight, I felt like I was swimming upstream in the Ebola River. I kid you not, an hour and a half into the flight, I felt like I was swimming upstream in the Ebola River. I ached. I was cold. I was hot. My entire sinus system felt like someone had stuffed the air hose from the garaje up both my nostrils. As most of you likely know, icky at 35,000 feet just ramps up to the point you want to keep heading up until you hit heaven and be done with it. But then we landed and went through customs, and the second I stepped out into the jet fuel-infused chilly muck of a Boston night and inhaled mostly fresh air, I felt 100 percent better. Fever symptoms, stuffiness, the swell of icky, all of it, gone. The human body, I tell ya, it’s mystifying. I’ve had a wonky knee for months now, so finally got it looked at up at New England Baptist, the place to go for wonky body parts. The doc walked in, saw my x-rays and went “Oh my.” Mind you, this is the same doc I’d gone to a year earlier for a wonky
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shoulder (my epitaph will read “He was wonky, he was snarky, he was icky… how he lived this long, no one knows”), and at that exam, she walked in, looked at that x-ray and shook her head, “Oh, that’s not good.” Doc, you really gotta work on your bedside manner. But I digress. The point is, these things hurt. Often, a lot. But it’s arthritis. From 66 years of ofthard (read: stupid) living. I remember as a teen and working delivering chairs, I’d run from wall to wall in the back of the truck – shoulder first – as hard as possible to toughen myself up for high school football, right shoulder, left shoulder, back and forth, over and over and over. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Know how they say a young person’s brain isn’t fully formed until they’re like 25 or so? There’s something to that. And in my case, it could be 66, because with a wonky shoulder, knee, etc., I’m still playing hockey and going all out, the definition of “all out” being very flexible, unlike me. Especially now. But I fully intend to keep at it, to keep moving, to keep from rusting, because you sit still any length of time, you’ll seize up like old farming equipment left to rot in the field to use a perfectly wonderful agricultural metaphor. And I shall not rot in life’s field! I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done, just more slowly, more prudently, more wisely. In short, I refuse to go gently into that good night. I refuse to age. I believe this with all my hopefully non-wonky heart, and if need be, will shout it from the rooftops – and pray it can be heard over all the snap, crackle, and pop, noises I make now more than ever.
Paul K andarian is a lifelong area resident and, since 1982, has been a profession writer, columnist, and contributor in national magazines, websites, and other publications.
