Icky Icky Fifty (three)

I've decided that I'm pretty ticked off.

Sort of like a time bomb. tickticktick boom

The joints that have bent and given and moved me around for 53 years are betraying me.  I don't much like it and have avoided admitting it for several years.

It all started back in those carpeted LDS Church Cultural Halls.  I think in those days, 25 years ago, someone in the architectural hierarchy at Church headquarters decided there needed to be more "culture" and less sports going on.  So some dork (excuse me, Brother Dork or Elder Dork) specified stupid indoor-outdoor carpet usually in gaggy orange for these large rooms that are used for not just ward roadshows but also basketball and volleyball games.  Brother Dork thought you could bounce a ball and make a basket and play sports just as good on carpet as on wood.  

I can imagine the meeting.  Brother Dork probably said, you know brothers, we spend lots of money to redo those wooden floors every couple of years or so in each building, and that is very expensive.  It will save us $ ___ millions of dollars if we glue some carpet down in ___thousands of cultural halls in ____ ward and stake buildings.  And then, bam!, all the architectural specifications now call for carpet in the cultural halls.

What they never thought to try was actually running on that orange carpet with lines sewn in.  Or pivoting.  Or stopping FAST!  (The kind of stuff you do when actually playing a game.)  You can do that sort of stuff on a concrete or wood court, but when you do it on carpet, you get STUCK.  And then your ligament goes POP and you fall down like  a dumb woman playing basketball on CARPET!

Humph.  I still remember the pop.  Well, that's old (as in 25 years ago old) news.  The knee that went POP had a torn ACL that finally got fixed 18 years ago.  Painful but what a great surgery.  Except for a slight tear in an MCL a few years later, that knee has been strong, but I've referred to it as my bad knee.  Shouldn't have done that.  Bad Karma to call one knee good and the other bad.

The BAD knee is now the old right knee that used to be the good knee.  But I can't blame it on church carpet or Brother Dork.  Just on myself running and being active.  So, in addition to two surgeries on the left knee, left and right shoulder surgeries (the right is still sore), now I get to go under the knife again for the good old, now bad, right knee.

Why does it feel so good to whine in print about my aging body?  Maybe because I don't have to listen to myself and because I've already complained out loud enough to my kids.  Maybe because I sort of feel like I'm disloyal if I actually say this stuff out loud one more time.  I actually love this old body of mine.  I'm really so grateful that bad joints is all that I have to whine about.  I really can deal with the pain when I think about what other people have to go through.

So, Brother Dork, I apologize for dissing on you.  How could you know the pain you would cause?  I forgive you for being stupid if you forgive me for being a whiner.

I'm going to listen to the tickticktick of my body getting older and be glad the clock can be repaired.