“I’m not as young as I used to be.”
Well, thank you Captain Obvious.
Think about it. You can’t say any stupider words.
Yet who hasn’t said that hackneyed cliche, maybe a million times?
When it comes to it, I guess I’m as stupid as anybody.
Took a heck of a tumble on my bicycle the other day. Uh huh, I was chewing sod and spitting it out. Got beat up pretty bad. Or so I thought.
Just had to have broken something. Laid there and checked myself out. Thought a jagged femur bone might have punched through the flesh of my thigh. Nope. Felt for blood. Nope. At least must have cracked some ribs, right? Well, maybe not.
Felt pretty abused though, I’ll tell you that.
I’d taken a corner way too sharply. Felt pretty cocky at the time, kinda like a kid. Lost some pounds in the last year, evidently thought I’d lost some decades, too. Swaying down around that corner, my pedal caught the sidewalk, and in a flash, I was a beached whale wondering what I was doing on shore.
If I’d really been a kid, I’d have bounced across the grass, jumped up, laughed it off, and quickly been on my way, unabashed and still riding like a knucklehead.
But as I’ve indicated, there was no bouncing going on with this one. It was more like a pancake flop.
I’ve taken a way-more dramatic tumble bicycling than this one. Once I went keister over tea kettle across the handle bars because something seized up on my bike. (Yes, I have come to profoundly believe in helmets. Alleluia!)
That time I landed on the street, not on the grass. But that was maybe ten, fifteen years ago. I’ve found that those years make quite a difference in recovery time.
This time I’m hobbling around, popping Aleve, thinking I could use some home nursing care, and feeling sorry for myself because I can’t play golf for a few days.
Poor baby.
Yeah, I’m not as young as I used to be.
And while we’re at it, I’ve got a couple more complaints about life.
My wife, who was riding right behind me and saw it all, said it could have been worse.
And I’m thinking things could always be worse. Who wrote that rule? Why can’t they always be better, as in: “That could have been bad, but, hey, it turned out pretty darned good.”
Why can’t we do it like that?
Anyway, that would have been my way if I’d designed life.
And another thing. Why does time go fast when we’re having fun, but it goes slowly when we’re not.
We need to turn that around. Like this:
Riding my bike like a stupid kid that day was fun, and it seemed like it took forever. “Will this fun ever end?”
And when I finally crashed after a long, long time--like maybe an eternity--of having fun, it happened in a blink of an eye, and I hardly remember feeling anything, and before I knew it, I was playing golf again.
That would work a whole lot better, wouldn’t it?
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