Fountain of youth

If you know me in real life, you know that I talk about my age all the time. I know you are annoyed by my tendency to constantly remind you that I am 39 years old (ha! did it again!) and that I feel my age in my bones blah blah blah. I have a feeling that I am trying to convince myself more than you.

I think I like being how old I am
. I don't mention my age with any sort of regret - no 'oh-my-god-I-miss-being-twenty-years-old' or anything. Its good. If there is one thing I am determined to do, its to grab life by its horns and make something out of it. By and large, I manage to do that - however I choose to define it.

But many a time, I have to sit down and think about things and sort of understand that how much ever I accept it (which I am convinced is better than resisting it), there are some things that time on earth does to you - irreversible changes so to speak. And my mouth may say its all good but the body knows its not the same.

My mum twisted her ankle recently. And no, its not some contagious disease this ankle thing. Nor is it particularly genetically inherited. I hope. She claims to have been sensible with her recovery. But she still has pain from it, and since she is a super energetic over-enthusiastic (especially about exercise) 68 year old, I am convinced that its serious, this ankle thing of hers.

In his youth, my dad used to drive around in a big, bad motorcycle. Not as big and bad as current day ones, for sure, but enough. He used to periodically get spilled from it. The reasons all seemed legitimate enough. A cow suddenly jumped in front of him. There was sand. Whatever, but he dislocated his shoulder a lot.

Many a time he would fix it back himself. Pop it back into the socket. Over the years it wouldn't go back so easily. The doctors had to do crazy stuff with it to fix it. I cannot even imagine the pain. One time he had bazillion ruptured capillaries because of the fixing. It got worse and worse. The tendency to dislocate became insane. And getting it back in place super hard.

I have had my share of (not serious) injuries. The first time my ankle sprained was when someone fat fell on it. It swelled up like crazy. I taped it with a fat crepe bandage and proceeded to my long jump event - confident of my body if not of my performance. Yeah, that was stupid.

I am still there - ignoring injuries, coaxing my body to step it up a notch, denying the niggles. But I can feel everything slowing down. It takes me months to forget them and move on. I still continue to be stupid about these things - I don't know - we both husband and wife are like that - for no tangible reason.

So I guess for all the talking about my age and acting as if its critical that within the first five minutes of meeting me you know that I am going to celebrate my 40th birthday next April (by running 40 kms, I hope), deep inside I still think my body is 18 years old. And capable of bouncing back like that. Got to really work on that.


(Photograph of my taped up calf from a while ago. I want to remind myself of this for the next time I try to do something stupid)