In my current age, which quite rudely storms towards “not young at all anymore” I have found that nothing makes you feel older than a knee injury.
Last week, feeling the waistband-stretching effects of subsisting on cupcakes and cheesesteaks for a month, I decided to go for a grand workout performance. You know the kind, the ones that are meant to snap you back into shape, to show your body who’s who. Yeah, that one.
I looked up “Crossfit workout no equipment” and laughed at the images of men and women walking around on their hands and doing pushups up against a wall. If I did the first, I would be in a hospital nine minutes later, assuming I was found. Otherwise, I’d be dead. The second, feet against the wall pushups, I simply don’t understand. How? Why? If I attempted it, I would fail. If I attempted it and was caught by my mom, I would be murdered. Lose-Lose. I moved on.
In the end I chose something which entailed running 100 meters and doing 10 burpees, another 100 meters and doing 10 pushups, 100 meters and then 10 situps and a final 100 meters and doing 10 squats. This was to be done 4 times. I did the math. I run, I do plenty of pushups, burpees, situps, and squats. I could do this. For the location, I chose my parents’ driveway. This would lead to the least amount of public humiliation as only when I popped down to the sidewalk would anyone see me huffing, puffing, and praying for death, and those people would be in cars so they couldn’t gawk or, worse, offer medical assistance.
I managed three rounds instead of four. I was simply too tired to get the last round. Also my ankles were starting to hurt, because I was wearing deck shoes, outside of high heels the most inappropriate shoes to run in. It took me an hour to catch my breath and to stop hyperventilating. I walked around the block (1 mile) and only one woman offered to drive me home (or to the ER). I viewed this as a win.
My loss became evident later when my dad and I went to the airport to pick up Burke. She was arriving from Prague and would spend the week with our family before we headed down the shore. My dad and I had an earnest discussion about working out on the way down I-95. He had seen me working out.
Grimly, he spoke, turning down the radio. “You know, you shouldn’t overdo it like that when you’re working out. You’re not a kid anymore.”
“Oh is that right!” I was immediately in my Irish. On a scale from 1-10 of sedentariness, with 1 being Tom Brady in 2015 and 10 being Orson Welles in 1984, is 610. Moreover, my dad has a way of suggesting people do things that make him more comfortable not him. “Your mother should slow down, take it easy,” he has said. But my mother at 73 moves and acts more like a 50 year old. The inference is, it doesn’t make her uncomfortable to be on the move all the time, but him.
It took it as a similar thing. I am far more active than my dad and the suggestion coming from him upset me. He did not endear his thesis to me any further when he followed up his point with this:
“You know, as you get older.”
What happened next was that I laid out his logical digression in a calm, intellectual rebuff that might have been voiced better by a four year old who had recently lost his lolly. I made it clear that we are not in the same age group, that I didn’t need physical fitness advice. and then a coolheaded list of things he could do with his advice.
And so it was with extra pain, suffering, and choked down crow that I had to admit he was right. We arrived at the airport about thirty minutes after our conversation and he stayed in the car while I got out to go the arrivals hall. It was as my foot hit the ground that the first wave of pain flashed from my right heel and rocketed through my right leg and into my hip, butt, and soul.
“Ah.”
“Whoa. You OK?” Dad’s parental instinct took over and he was not rubbing it in.
“Yes,” I said through a wince and gritted teeth. “Good.”
I then used every car on my way to get through the parking lot. By the time I hobbled into the arrivals hall, my left knee had joined in the excruciating fun and I looked as though I had just been hit by a car. I made it to a seat and plopped into it with gratitude.
While waiting for Burke, I plotted my explanation. It was the uneven pavement and the bad shoes, yes that was it. I could imagine my dad sitting in his car now listening to sports talk and rubbing his hands together in victory. I could not allow this.
I am going to be 48 in two months. I was not old enough to be incapacitated by a physical injury. I was also not old enough to admit I was wrong.
Burke arrived and I took her rolling luggage bag, opened the handle and used it as a cane as I rolled it alongside me. She told me about her trip, but all I could hear was “uneven pavement and bad shoes” which I muttered underneath my breath with each excruciating step. We plodded through the garage, my grimace of agony magically becoming a smile of content as we rounded the last KIA before out car. I opened the back and somehow got her bags inside without screeching with pain. I got in.
“Hey” but it came out “Aaa.”
“You need to get some better shoes if you’re gonna run on that uneven pavement.”
He had taken mercy on me the way people of our supposed age group should. I patted his shoulder (or held onto it to help me get the seatbelt on).
“Thank you, Dad,” I said. “I agree.”
We need to look out for each other, old guys like us. I got down off my high horse. Well I would have if I didn’t think it would put me in the hospital.
