Old Age Happens or
The Conspiracy of Sidewalks
Old age happens to all of us; but "when and how?" you ask. You could go to the library and rummage through shelves of books devoted to this subject, none of which really tell you what you want to know, or you can continue to read this and know the precise moment when it is ushered into your life. I have personally documented the exact instant when old age happens.
You may be heading down that path as you read this so remain alert, lest you experience old age much too soon. Let me tell you up front, old age has nothing to do with a calendar. I have a wonderful middle aged friend who in her mid seventies is still doing marathons. The local paper just featured an article of a young ninety year old long distance swimmer who works out the equivalent of five miles in the pool daily. It has nothing to do with wrinkles, sagging boobs or failing memory; those are just fodder for our children's jokes. It is an event, a moment in time that lies in wait for us when we least expect it and then explodes like a pimple on a teenager's nose just before the big dance. So lissen up' as the kids say, this is first hand research.
It was mid-September and I was still in my prime; a middle-ager enjoying the one wonderful sunny day after countless rainy ones that mark the west coast advent of autumn. I put on my running shoes and headed out for a much needed power walk. I talked my friendwho is still basking in her middle age years as I write-into coming with me. The exercise would do her good as well. The glorious day loosened our tongues as well as other muscles and we chatted up a storm as our legs began to move into long easy strides. We walked past a new housing development with imposing stone facades and headed into an older residential area of our community. Here we could admire the long established gardens, the colors of fall in the trees and the lengths of the grass on the lawns after the spell of wet weather.
And then it happened. The sidewalk simply reared up and tripped me. My left foot caught the cement while my right leg flung itself wildly forward in an effort to prevent a face plant. Much to my amazement the right leg held me long enough for the left foot to disentangle itself and catch up with the right foot. While I was congratulating myself for this feat of agility, the right leg decided that extensions of this sort were O.K. for the Olympic gymnasts but certainly not for a middle ager who was about to become a senior citizen. My leg froze in place. Then like wood splitting, the muscles that had been stretched as tight as the proverbial drum cracked. I couldn't believe my ears. Have you ever heard your muscles crack? I'm not lying; it is like wood being split for the fire. I had little time to dwell in amazement on this phenomenon as a searing pain ran up the right leg to the hip and up the spine to my head, almost cutting off my breath. I hung in this precarious position for all of a nanosecond before I could grab my friend's arm and whimper. "I think we have to go home. I hurt myself."
The power walk turned into a slow limp home where I put up my leg while my friend packed it in ice and made a pot of tea. A week later the only exercise I could think of getting was to hobble across the kitchen floor to get more ice from the fridge and make more comforting pots of tea. I have developed a belated sympathy for my mother and her friends whose constant battle with the sidewalks left them black and blue while we middle aged youngsters found these escapades uncharitably humorous. "I see you've been trying to use the sidewalk as a trampoline again mom, there's more bounce in the real ones."
"I'm sorry mom. You were right. The sidewalks are out to get us; there is a conspiracy of sidewalks that wants to turn every middle ager into a senior citizen." Sidewalks anticipate the moment when a middle-ager is off guard and mark the occasion by rearing up and tripping us to celebrate the onset of old age. Sidewalks, not calendars, jokes or temporary memory losses mark the transition from middle to old age. You can prolong the event by carefully avoiding contact with sidewalks, but inevitably, one day, one will rear up like a bucking bronco or open up like a giant sink hole and get you. Old age will have arrived with a bang and a whimper. Mark my words.