Sore As Heck

There used to be a time in my life when someone would ask me,”Are you sore?” and I would presume that they were wondering if I was upset. It was another way of saying, “are you angry with me?” Time out- why does the expression “angry with” have the same meaning as “angry at”? Being angry with someone should mean that you both are angry for a common cause or at each other, no?- Time in

Regardless, today when someone asks me, “Are you sore?”, I usually reply, “do you have five minutes and I’ll be glad to share?” And then I begin. “My joints are sore- knees, ankles, wrists, shoulders….” Am I forgetting any? And for those who are still interested, there’s my arthritis, tendonitis, itchy scalp, swollen legs, frequent.. uh, we won’t go there. You get the message. I wake up every morning wondering if I should just stay in bed another half hour or drag myself out into the paying world.

Yesterday I woke up, started to pivot to sit up and realized right away that there was an acute pain in my lower back. Time out- hmm. Acute. The pain doesn’t look cute to me. In fact, I can’t even see it unless I have eyes behind my head and can look down in an immediate ninety degree angle- Okay, time in. I took two five hundred milligram tablets of non-aspirin pain killer- you know, a generic version of the ones that had a major recall twenty or so years ago when some goofball somehow poisoned a batch. Time out- let’s get this clear. I didn’t take goofballs. I leave that to the professional athletes who don’t want to get caught taking steroids- Okay, time in again.

The non-aspirin stuff did no good and for a while I was walking around like Groucho Marx but I didn’t have a cigar in one hand and I was in too much pain to raise my eyebrows in a leer-like expression. In the late afternoon I decided to rest for a while with an electric heating pad while lying in bed. I woke up two hours later forgetting that I had left the switch for the pad set to the high position. So, I was not only walking around with lower back pain but also with a burning sensation in my back.

Yeah, this baby boomer is sore and he means “upset”. I did nothing to deserve this. I don’t remember overextending myself physically the night before. I was on the stationary bike for a little over a half hour but that should not have caused me to do make an unusual movement. (Let’s keep it clean) I wore the same coat outside in the same weather with the jacket zipped up the same way.

So, this must be another of life’s tricks played on the slowly aging but determined fifty-something year old ex-weekend athlete. It could be worse, I guess. I could be one of those guys you hear about on the radio and television commercials who frequently gets up in the middle of the night unless he takes a certain pill. Wait, I forgot- I do. Oops, add slowly losing my memory to the list, please.