GOOD TIMES
Bound to my age I vowed with all my heart that once I started noticing I was getting older, to never get older. And along with the vow to my first wife to be Paul together forever broken K andarian decades ago, this newest one lays shattered by the side of life’s road in ruins, nothing but memories of a youth spent bounding. See, I was a bounder. That’s the best way to put it. I’d not walk anywhere like into my house or upstairs. I’d fairly bound, which is running at a good pace and leaping. Bounding and leaping. That was the mode of transportation du jour in my younger days, which far outnumber my older days. And that’s the thing as you age: you remember what you used to do, what your body was capable of doing and which you can still do now but in a greatly diminished form that little resembles the way it was, the way you were. Now, at 66 and really for the last few years, I don’t bound or leap. I try to, but it ends up being a slow lift of leg and foot with an accompanying groan of pain and simultaneous snap, crackle, and pop of every Rice Krispie joint in my lower half. It sucks. It totally and completely sucks. I mean my mind wants to do it, it remembers bounding and leaping, fondly, soaring up staircases three steps at a time, a veritable superhero of perambulation. I try that now and I feel like a broken-down former comic book character unable to perambulate to the nearest ambulance. Sigh. The human body wasn’t meant to be around as long as it is these days. It was designed to hit puberty, make children and provide for those children briefly by hunting and gathering, and then
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dying after fulfilling our promulgation obligation. Now, thanks to historically rapid medical advances, evolution hasn’t caught up (and won’t for a long time) to the need for our bodies to adapt to a longer shelf life. And as a result, everything hurts because our leaping and bounding years weren’t supposed to last this long. The pandemic definitely didn’t help. Granted, as of this writing anyway, I remain healthy, as do my family and friends. I am grateful for that. But the gyms closed, hockey went away, and as much as I tried to stay in shape hiking, things started to stiffen, ache, and resonate with the toll of a lotta years spent bounding and leaping.
Now, thanks to historically rapid medical advances, evolution hasn’t caught up (and won’t for a long time) to the need for our bodies to adapt to a longer shelf life. Now, the gyms are open and slowly I’m working worn body parts, or the muscles around them, to mitigate the pain, and that’s the best we can do. Strengthen the areas around that arthritic knee, shoulder, and back and take the strain off. It helps, immeasurably. And happily, I’m back to hockey, back on the ice, back in the tools of ignorance, as the late, great Gump Worsley called goalie
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gear, he the last pro netminder to not wear a mask, leading to another great Gumpism as he famously said, “My face is my mask.” And it looked it. But for a little while now, I’ve been strapping on those tools and flopping and flipping and falling all over the ice in an effort to stop the puck, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but winning isn’t the goal anymore. Getting off the ice in one piece is. Or at least with minimal pain. The pain is still there, however, it never really goes away. Not too many years ago, I’d wake up to this pain or that pain, a balky joint, a tricky ankle, a back spasm, but the next day or even a few hours of stretching later, it’d be gone. And I’d be back to leaping and bounding. Now that knee, that shoulder, that back… the pain is constant and a good day is when I can walk without a limp. And sadly, that invariably leads to this when I’m walking with someone. Them: “Why are you limping?” Me: “I’m limping?” Shoot me. Shoot me now. But I shall persevere. I shall continue to hike, to play hockey, to work out. I shall not end up like my dad, who, after he hit 70 or so, just gave up, did no or little exercise and got very old, walking stooped over like a man forever looking for dropped coins. I shall not go gentle into that good night, as Dylan Thomas poeticized. I shall go kicking and screaming and playing the game I love and staving off the dark angel and living every juicy drop of life to its fullest. Just no leaping and bounding anymore. Hey, I’m an old guy now, what’s my hurry?
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.
