Trust me when I declare that I am not competing for sympathy against folks suffering from cancer, blocked arteries, diabetes or other serious ailments.
I do nonetheless think that my body is out to get me.
And not just with the chronic aches, pains and wrinkles that accompany normal aging. No, my body perpetrates fiendishly clever assaults on my comfort and dignity. (Misery loves company, so you may be yelling, “Too much information!” as this essay assaults your own comfort and dignity.)
I am most keenly aware of the wee-wee complications. I can sleep through the night (thank you very much), but during my waking hours, I hear from my urinary tract more often that I hear from the extended-warranty pitchman. I wish I could be the bladder whisperer, but I’m more the bladder “will you shut the heck up and stop harassing me????” type.
Seriously, even if I’ve gotten preoccupied and skimped on hydration, I apparently start absorbing moisture from house plants, puddles, horse troughs and the like. On a really bad day, the technicians at Hoover Dam have learned to mutter, “No, it’s not a leak. Tyree’s at it again.”
Alas, my gastrointestinal system gets in on the act, too. Regardless of how well I’ve handled my diet, in the back of my mind I can hear Chubby Checker on heavy rotation. (“Let’s go again like we did last hour/Let’s go again, like you trained your rear…”)
Dressing in a hurry always brings surprises. Hangnails that were nonexistent 30 seconds ago suddenly snag delicate fabrics. Instead of being recognized as a sharp-dressed man, I am dismissed as someone who lost a tussle with Zorro.
The more I need to meet a project deadline, the more my nose spontaneously conjures up distracting postnasal drip. Granted, I am in good company. The full Archimedes quote was “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and a big honkin’ box of Kleenex, and I shall move the world.”
On a related note, I dread jostling anyone in a crowd. As a super-polite citizen, I want to issue a robust “Excuse me, please.” But I invariably have just enough phlegm in my throat to turn it into a wimpy guttural response. Countless strangers have inched away from me while conjecturing, “Maybe if the poor schmuck discovers fire, he can roast himself a mastodon.”
I truly despise being double-teamed. Sometimes my inner child colludes with my body. I can’t drive within 25 miles of a cemetery without my body demanding to know, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Why is my body so relentless in bombarding me with missteps, coughs and eye boogers??? After all I’ve done for it!
I exercise… my option for choicest spot on the sofa, but exercise, nonetheless. I get at least six-ish hours of sleep per night on my good-as-new mattress. That’s more than the previous owners got, with all that squawking about, “The British are coming! The British are coming!”
Finally, I am careful about what foods I put into my bodily temple. I don’t exactly adhere to the Food Pyramid, but I have discovered the rival Food Sphinx. I’ve even come close to solving the Food Sphinx’s riddle: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and deep-fries everything that is arguably edible in the evening?”
tyreetyrades@aol.com
