Fragility.
Somewhere in the midst of depositing seven pounds of body weight in my bathroom the other day, it occurred to me that my health is much more fragile than it once was.
When I was young, I never got sick. Sure, I pretended to be sick to get out of school for a day or two, but actual sick wasn't something I did a whole lot of. The only times I saw the inside of the hospital was when I broke my thumb jumping my bike (the front wheel came off mid-air, so not much I could have done about that), the occasional twisted ankle in soccer, and that time my appendix blew up.
As I got older (and fatter), I'd throw out my back or something stupid like that, but that was about it. My health wasn't good in my late 20s and early 30s, but I wasn't sick.
Then, in my mid to late 30s, just as I started to get in some kind of physical shape other than round, I had to go and introduce kids into my life. Young kids. Young, germ-infested kids. Kids on the cutting edge of weaponized illness technology. If they got it, true to their upbringing, they shared it. With me. My wife could be with them all day, wiping their noses and literally bathing in their germs, but I would be the one who got sick. I guess that's fair. She'd do all of the hard work and I would puke.
Now I just expect to be knocked down, and every year I'm not disappointed. Last year I almost thought I would get away scot-free, only to be felled just before the roads cleared. I have less-healthy associates that say it's because I train so hard, at which point I laugh. I'm far from being so light it would affect my immune system. I eat far more than I should, so I guess I get the required amounts of essential nutrients somewhere in there. Still, when your immune system is on par with the defenses of pre-WWII France, even a "mass-quantities of pork fat" strategy isn't enough.
I thought I had taken my annual hit with the flu. Then I found out I had a sinus infection. Hot on the heels of that is the latest plague. I'm not so sure I'm done for the season. I'd love to believe it, but the mischievous grin of my youngest son tells me there's more to come.
I'd love to lose the weight, but not like that.
When I was young, I never got sick. Sure, I pretended to be sick to get out of school for a day or two, but actual sick wasn't something I did a whole lot of. The only times I saw the inside of the hospital was when I broke my thumb jumping my bike (the front wheel came off mid-air, so not much I could have done about that), the occasional twisted ankle in soccer, and that time my appendix blew up.
As I got older (and fatter), I'd throw out my back or something stupid like that, but that was about it. My health wasn't good in my late 20s and early 30s, but I wasn't sick.
Then, in my mid to late 30s, just as I started to get in some kind of physical shape other than round, I had to go and introduce kids into my life. Young kids. Young, germ-infested kids. Kids on the cutting edge of weaponized illness technology. If they got it, true to their upbringing, they shared it. With me. My wife could be with them all day, wiping their noses and literally bathing in their germs, but I would be the one who got sick. I guess that's fair. She'd do all of the hard work and I would puke.
Now I just expect to be knocked down, and every year I'm not disappointed. Last year I almost thought I would get away scot-free, only to be felled just before the roads cleared. I have less-healthy associates that say it's because I train so hard, at which point I laugh. I'm far from being so light it would affect my immune system. I eat far more than I should, so I guess I get the required amounts of essential nutrients somewhere in there. Still, when your immune system is on par with the defenses of pre-WWII France, even a "mass-quantities of pork fat" strategy isn't enough.
I thought I had taken my annual hit with the flu. Then I found out I had a sinus infection. Hot on the heels of that is the latest plague. I'm not so sure I'm done for the season. I'd love to believe it, but the mischievous grin of my youngest son tells me there's more to come.
I'd love to lose the weight, but not like that.
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