Early Onset Old Age

The realities of my aging body were presented to me by a knee surgeon when I was in 8th grade, but there's an argument that this story starts when I went to summer French Camp years before. I say "years before" because I don't know when I went to French Camp. I was little. I learned how to say "I would like to buy some candy, please," and I recall wearing a name tag with a French name on it, which was made of a piece of wood. But if I am being honest, I might be confusing the "unique piece of wood" idea with a wedding I attended a few years ago, where the bride and groom gave everyone coasters made from trees on their property. Who is to say?

All of this has to do with why my back hurts this morning, and I am dreading getting on an airplane tomorrow. Lac du Bois is a part of the Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji, Minnesota, and my mom, an avowed lover of languages and a French teacher, decided to send my brother and me there to level up our French skills. This was mostly a bust for me. I came away from the experience with very little French, though I did learn how to say "I would like to buy some candy, please," a phrase that I have found has little practicality outside of French camp concession stands. Perhaps had I learned how to ask "Where is the bathroom?" I would not have embarrassed myself on my first solo trip to Paris when I tried to impress a lady and I managed to ask "where is the bathtub" in a restaurant and was promptly ridiculed enough to stop taking French classes and take up Arabic. But that's another story for another day.

While I was not learning the French language, I was, in fact, learning BODY Language. But not like that. No, here what I mean is that it was at French Camp that I saw a kid do the Human Pretzel and I wondered to myself "can I do that?" Had you asked me where "flexibility" comes from before I started writing this, I would have probably guessed it's either inherited like hair color or it's learned, as in "right place, right time to permanently fuck up your body chemistry."

So, there I was in Bemidji, learning French, when I saw a kid yank both legs behind his head and play his butt like a bongo drum. I had to give it a try. Et voila, my life as a contortionist began. After the human pretzel, I learned a party trick that followed me through high school, wherein I took my arms connected in front of my body, lifted them high over my head, and snapped them behind me, still connected at the wrist. This, to my knowledge, doesn't have a cool name like the human pretzel, but whatever you call it, I call it a mistake.

I was the kid who could twist and bend in ways other kids couldn't, and instead of being just a neat trick, that early flexibility set the tone for how my joints developed. Some of it was genetic, but having looser sockets and pliable knees meant I was always more prone to the big injuries later — the ACL tears, the shoulder surgeries — because the same traits that made me bendy also made me unstable.

I should have taken more time to learn verb conjugation and bathroom vocabulary instead of the arts of youthful entertainment. But alas, I was young, dumb, and now, incredibly flexible. It was a magical time.

In preparation for typing this, I looked up where flexibility comes from, and the short version is that we were all right. I knew that you could "learn" it because that's what Yoga with Adrienne has taught me for many years now. You twist your legs into a position long enough and you're bound to open your hips up, but turns out the other things are true too. Some people are born with lax tendons, and others still have the good fortune of joint shape and body chemistry that allows for weird shit to happen.

All this to say that in 7th grade, when I was running at full speed and decided to stop and try to go another way, my knee exploded. After a summer of waiting, I had the ACL replaced in 8th grade, and that's when Dr. Graf told me something along the lines of "because of the way we did this surgery, you can reasonably expect to have knees of someone double your age for the rest of your life. When you're 20, expect the knee issues of a 40-year-old. When you're 40, your knees are 80. etc." As a 12-year-old, this didn't really set in, but now, as I approach 40, I am starting to get it.

Saturday, we took the boys bowling. We've done this a few times in the past few weeks, so nothing terribly outlandish or wild. I bowled close to 120 last time out and left a lot of pins on potential spares on the lane. I am not skilled enough at bowling to determine the right ball weight for maximizing my power and spin. While searching for a ball for Roman to push down the ramp and off the bumpers, I stumbled upon one that seemed suitable for me. Turns out, I overestimated what was fine for me, and when I woke up on Sunday morning, my trunk was shot. Too much torque. Too much spin. Too much weight. Too much pain.

Breathing was hard, bending was tough, and slouching — one of my preferred positions — was impossible. I just came back from the chiropractor, and despite thinking "is the correction that is going to give me a stroke?" the entire time, I decided that that momentary fear was better than getting on an airplane for a few hours with back pain. The good news is that the chiro reported everything moved back into place pretty smoothly (my body is nothing if not an easy mover), and she told me I could move away from ice and toward heat.

Here’s hoping I wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed and not in pain.