It started earlier, but I didn\u2019t realize it until I was in my thirties, the aging process. It was the day I showed some kids in my back yard, probably at one of my daughter\u2019s birthday parties, how I could do a running flip. I\u2019d done it a \u201cmillion\u201d times when I was a kid. The running part went well \u2013 the flip part, not so hot. I landed on my seat, not my feet. I\u2019d lost some agility over the years. My only thought, two weeks later when the ache had vanished, \u201cI\u2019ll get better.\u201d (At doing the flip – at restoring my ability to do a flip). \u201cI just need to turn back the clock a little,\u201d I told myself, blind to the obvious truth, the aging process is a one-way street. <\/p>\n
It kept happening; every decade brought new flops to the forefront. I had taken up jogging when I was in my twenties, slacked off and then picked it back up in my mid-thirties. It took two months before I could go around the block without stopping and gasping for breath that time round. More proof that the aging process was quietly at work. Eventually, I got the rhythm and was doing four miles every other day. \u201cI\u2019m going to do this forever! It\u2019s so freeing! Well into my nineties,\u201d I professed. My arrogance was limitless, like I could take getting into my nineties for granted. Then came my forties. I left behind the six-minute mile I did once a year on the high school track and ushered in the \u201cwhy is my back aching so much\u201d and the \u201csore knee\u201d era. Followed by a few other conditions as my physicality digressed from a forty-year-old frame to a fifty. I was sure I\u2019d get better, still believing the aging process was a curable malady. <\/p>\n
My fifties started okay. \u201cWhat\u2019s the big deal?\u201d By 54 I knew the answer to that question. I was forced to trade in the jogging sneakers for walking shoes, and add swimming and bike riding to make up for it. \u201cI can take this routing into my nineties,\u201d I told myself. \u201cAnd, pick up jogging again, as soon as I get better! <\/p>\n
Wham, Bang! In what seemed like 15 minutes, there were 60 candles on my birthday cake. The old coot was born. He was a tad wiser than that arrogant 30, 40 and 50-year-old self. Wiser, but still delusional. Every once in a while, I\u2019d try jogging. It seemed easy the first week, and then my aging frame brutally reminded me why I\u2019d given it up, hurting as much as that running front flip\/flop disaster three decades earlier. Did I gain any wisdom? Not much. I still thought, \u201cI\u2019ll get better. <\/p>\n
Introduction<\/b>: Sometimes an introduction doesn\u2019t fit at the beginning of an essay. Sometimes it belongs in the middle, or in this case, at the end, after I\u2019ve finished my rant and wonder, \u201cWhat is the point?\u201d I guess this time, it\u2019s my compulsion to report what lies ahead, for readers who, like me, never expected to get old. Or, I\u2019m trying to give voice to myself and my fellow old coots that are youth, energy, flexibility, balance, health and memory challenged. To report that we aren\u2019t asking for special treatment, just not to be marginalized and discarded out of hand. We\u2019re not all there, that\u2019s true, but we think we\u2019ll get better. Let us live with the delusion. <\/p>\n