A healthy spine is important. An unhealthy one is a pain in the neck
Life these days is two steps up, one step back. Or one step up, a sway to the side and two steps to correct that stagger. Stand still for a moment to get going again.
Or charge ahead and hope for a wall nearby for support. Hope your shoes don’t catch on the floor when you try move sideways. Move with a slowness that isn’t painful but which must look that way to observers.
Or else why would so many people offer help when I think I’m doing fine?
After a couple of surgeries on the vertebrae in my neck, I have recovered enough to be out on my own. I had to prove to a driving instructor that I could safely drive.
Since your spine tells your body everything the brain wants you to do, a healthy spine is important.
Not like mine, which several doctors have classified only as “a mess.” That’s the way the genetics go – or went in my case.
But people are so helpful. Heck I was too when I could move better. I didn’t realize how difficult it could be to accept help sometimes. Your automatic response is, “No, I’m OK.”
And you very well may manage whatever situation you are in. But the truth is that things are much easier if you accept help. Even if it is from a young woman trying to herd three kids into a store while pushing a fourth in a stroller.
It is uplifting to see how willing people are to help. Especially children, I think because I remind them of their grandpa.
That comes in handy when I am trying to read those sale labels on the bottom shelves of supermarkets. I have to get down on my knees to see the labels because if I bend over there may be no stopping. I will go all the way over. That is quite embarrassing anywhere but particularly in the middle of an aisle in a supermarket.
I would use a motorized cart but I am supposed to walk as much as possible. Anyway, there is a lot of stuff on shelves and in those refrigerated cases that you can’t reach from a cart. So, you still need help.
I’m not alone. Friends and relatives have similar stories.
Aging isn’t something I ever thought about a lot. Someone described a character in a book I was reading as always being surprised by what happened in his life. That would be me. I never dreamed I would have the career I had, live in Belleville and be married to the same wonderful woman for 49 years.
Arlo Guthrie said that he is amazed that he could get by singing a dumb song for so long. But he was more amazed that he could get paid for it as well.
That’s column writing in a nutshell. I really wanted to play professional baseball, but this will more than do. Even if I struggle along like a drunken bum sometimes.
