Why Getting Old Wasn’t My First Choice

Very few young people will even open this post, because after all, who in their right mind wants to read about the aches and pains of the older generation? But some of you who qualify for the seniors discount at Denny’s, however, will continue reading just in the hope that you will get to laugh at someone who has counted more trips around the sun than you have.

Now, I strongly believe in manifesting my own reality. But I apparently messed up the message I was sending a few times in the last three decades, because I let two people come into my life that knew how to make their cars go fast but didn’t know how to stop them without using the sheet metal and the frame of my cars for their brake.

Now the only reason I’m telling you this is because those close encounters of the worse kind have caused a lot of the nerve and others cells in my spine to decide at times that they no longer like the rest of me, and they conduct internecine warfare with the pain producing cells in my brain.

One of the more recent fighting strategies of the nerve cells in my back is to trick the brain into locking tight the muscle on my inner thigh. This usually happens late at night after a hard days work, and so my wife is the only one who gets to listen to how well I have mastered the dictionary of four letter words.

But last night… well it happened a little earlier in the evening.

I was at a public meeting where our local elected officials were discussing the merits of raising my taxes, and as usual, the big mouth, part of me had something to say. With hand raised, I was called on and told to come to the front of the small auditorium to speak. And the moment I stood up that war I mentioned above started with a thermonuclear salvo.

I do realize that screaming in a public forum has now become almost an acceptable practice, and I have to tell you that I considered that option before deciding that partial public humiliation was really preferable to complete public humiliation. Dragging a leg that was rigidly locked in pain, I limped to the lectern while using the word “cramp” to explain to the audience why their laughter was acceptable.

I spoke my piece while enveloped in mind numbing pain and then did an excellent portrayal of Captain Ahab walking the deck of the Pequod as I struggled to get back to my seat.

I guess it serves me right for agreeing they should raise my taxes.