A Stretch

So when you get older your muscles and tendons just want to sit on the couch and eat popcorn and watch Netflix. Really, there’s lots of good stuff on Netflix these days.

When you are young, of course, you worry about your body. You want to look muscular, svelte, sexy. There’s that whole dating thing you gotta worry about. In your mind, you have to have a “rocket body” (a term a former co-worker of mine used to descrive a particularly delicious court reporter). You think that if you don’t have that beautiful or at least passable body, no member of the opposite sex will be interested in mating with you.

Which was not exactly true. I ended up becoming a father with a woman who didn’t seem to worry about my body so much as my potential to be a good father. If I can brag a moment, my son tells me that she got that part right.

But back to the beautiful body. In order to get one of those, you have to go to the gym and work and work and work. Which I sort of did when I was younger.

I did one smart thing in the gym in my younger days: I always worked on my “core.” that means instead of concentrating on my arms or legs, I did things to make my torso strong. It has helped in my old age.

It’s been a while since I was in the gym. I have a nagging suspicion that I still have an active gym membership somewhere, probably up in Humboldt County where I haven’t lived since 2015.

These days I am happy if I can walk upright, stand up from the couch, not fall over when I am waiting in line at the grocery store.

So I discovered one good thing about Facebook. They have these people who show you how to stretch your old body so that you don’t fall over.

I’ve been working on these stretches for about a week now. I feel strangely limber and I haven’t fallen over at all. I start with standing push-ups against the door. Then I skate from side to side. Leg lifts against the door. Then I sit at my piano bench (it has no arms) and lift my legs. An arm stretch from the sides. Finished by heel lifts.

I’ve only been doing this for a week, but let me tell you, friends and neighbors, it makes a big difference.

The only drawback is that when I did this stuff in the gym I could look at the pretty (and shapely) girls while I worked out. I’m sure more than a few of them were creeped out by my presence. Sorry. I am a man and therefore I am a creep.

So, maybe it’s best I don’t do this in a gym where I would creep out the pretty girls. At this point, I stretch in my living from, where the only ones watching me are my stuffed mermaids. And they don’t care.