I’m fifty-two years
old, and I had no idea what life in my fifties would be like. But to be honest, I didn’t know what to
expect in my forties, thirties, twenties…okay l admit it, I’ve never known what
to expect. I guess one of the things
which snuck up on me was this growing older thing. Nobody ever told me what happens as you
mature. Well maybe they did, but when I
was young and thought I’d live forever, I probably wasn’t paying attention to
what older people said.
I will say this
about getting on in years; it ain’t for the faint of heart for sure. The creaks, groans and assorted pains started
manifesting a couple of years ago.
Watching me get up off of the ground, well let’s just say it is not a
thing of grace and beauty. Not that I’m
complaining you understand, today’s blog is purely in fun.
Since we are going
to have a little fun, let’s start with some of the changes I’ve noticed about
my body in the past few years. To start
with, about five years ago I started noticing pain in my backside when I sat
for long periods of time; it was almost as if I could never get
comfortable. Peering into my bathroom
mirror one morning after getting out of the shower, I noticed my butt looking a
little saggy, and thought to myself, what happened to my butt?
Then one day at
work, I was delivering parts from one side of the plant to another using a
forklift. This required driving the
forklift along a gravel road with all kinds of potholes and such. As I was slowly making my way to the drop off
point, I noticed a lot of movement from my chest. When I say movement, it was like a bouncing
motion, and was actually a little bit painful.
I now have of a new degree respect for women all together.
It appears gravity
is winning in my life. All those jokes
I’ve made over the years about the Bible saying bodily exercise profits little,
and who wants to do anything there is little profit in, may not have been the
best thing. Perhaps I should’ve invested
a little bit of time in some type of exercise to tighten up things.
As I said earlier,
getting old ain’t for the faint of heart.
One of the things I’ve found is the hardest to deal with is when I start
a task, thinking in my mind this will be a piece of cake, only to see my body
rebel against this idea for lack of ability.
My wife for years said I am stronger than I realize. At work sometimes I have to throw four by
fours up onto a semi trailer as we load steel pipe, and while the guys in their
twenties are tossing them like toothpicks, I’m down there struggling to lift it
up in the air. This doesn’t keep me from
doing the job though; I just have to take a little bit more time than the rest
of the guys.
As I said earlier,
growing older isn’t for the faint at heart, and it is definitely not for
sissies. What I’ve learned is now I just
have to go a little bit slower than I did before, and pace myself a bit
more. One thing which hasn’t slowed down
is my mind however. Regardless of what
the next fifty years holds for me, I know I’ll be thinking and using my brain
as much when I die, as I am today, and this brings me joy.
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