I was swimming laps at the high school pool the other day and experienced yet another affirmation of the aging process; my left elbow started killing me. HOW SORE WAS IT? It was so sore, I could only pull it through the water at one-quarter speed. When you do that, and your other arm is working fine, you swim in a circular pattern, not a straight line. I\u2019d take three strokes with each arm and then bang into the sidewall. Three strokes, bang; three strokes, bang. It was a nice cadence, but not very effective when your objective is to get from one end of the pool to the other without hurting yourself. I eventually backed off with my right arm and was able to swim a lap in sort of a straight line. But, it took me four times longer than normal to swim from one end of the pool to the other. <\/p>\n
A sore elbow is a serious condition for an old coot. We rely on our elbows. It\u2019s a mechanism we use all the time, usually to get the attention of a poor soul standing next to us when we want to make a comment about someone or something. First, you feel the elbow; then you get the derogatory remark. It\u2019s hissed out of the side of the old coot\u2019s mouth, \u201cLook at that young fool over there, his eyebrow is pierced!\u201d You take a step to the left, to avoid another elbow but it doesn\u2019t work; he moves with you. Then you get it again. This time you\u2019re ready for it; you tense up to save yourself from a sore rib cage. He then says, \u201cLook at him now; he\u2019s getting into the car with that gorgeous babe!\u201d You want to say, \u201cOf course he is, you old coot. He\u2019s \u201cwith it\u201d and you don\u2019t even get it.\u201d But, you hold yourself back, deciding it\u2019s better to keep your mouth shut and get away from him before the elbow starts up again. <\/p>\n
The \u201cold coot\u201d elbow is developed over a long period of time. It starts when an old coot gets married and he and his wife have a child. The wife feels \u201cit\u201d for the first time when she gets home from the hospital. She drifts off into a deep sleep, the first one in months, now that she can sleep on her stomach. She\u2019s in dreamland, lying on a tropical beach with a hotel staff seeing to her every whim. WHAM! She\u2019s startled back to consciousness by a triple elbow to the ribs. \u201cWhat?\u201d She cries. The lump next to her in bed says, \u201cThe baby is crying.\u201d Somehow, she manages to get up and drag herself over to the crib. The \u201celbow\u201d has been born. She\u2019ll eventually learn that it has a large vocabulary. For now, it just says, \u201cThe baby is crying!\u201d Soon enough, it will say, \u201cJosh threw up,\u201d or, \u201cSomebody\u2019s at the door.\u201d The \u201celbow\u201d will dominate their relationship. <\/p>\n
At cocktail parties, it will be used as an escape mechanism. She\u2019ll feel the elbow in her ribs, followed by a whispered, \u201cThere\u2019s Helen and Jim; let\u2019s sneak into the other room so they don\u2019t talk our ears off. Besides, I owe Jim fifty bucks\u201d Eventually, she\u2019ll develop an \u201celbow\u201d of her own. It will be more than a match for his; the female version comes to a sharper point, one that can fracture a rib if the user gets over excited. It too, is used at cocktail parties, as in, \u201cDid you see that awful dress Midge is wearing?\u201d If hubby doesn\u2019t acknowledge the comment fast enough, he\u2019ll get a second helping. This only happens once or twice. After that, he never fails to respond immediately. <\/p>\n
After 25 years of marriage, the \u201celbow\u201d loses its effectiveness. Both parties develop thick calluses on their rib cages. If an intruder breaks into the house and she elbows him, to say, \u201cI heard a noise downstairs; go and check it out,\u201d nothing happens. The old coot goes right on snoring, dreaming he\u2019s accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He struts across the stage in a dazzling white tux, like a Hollywood star at the Oscars. In real life, if he ever got any kind of an award, the picture would be quite different. He\u2019d limp and shuffle across the stage in a dark blue suit. The static electricity in his pant legs would have them clinging to his white athletic socks, a good three inches above a pair of mismatched shoes, one brown, one black. A size \u201c42-L\u201d tag would dangle from his sleeve, the one he missed when removing the rest of the Sear\u2019s stickers because his elbow was too sore to reach it. <\/p>\n