Old Folks' Boogie

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And you know that you're over the hill When your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill (Little Feat, "Old Folks' Boogie") Or the Rolling Stones put it a little more succinctly: "What a drag it is getting old." I was MIA yesterday because I went to a Dale Watson concert in Cincinnati. Today I'm more like PAIN. It's one of the side effect of getting older, of course: you become an expert in anatomy when you go to the doctor ("My what is strained?" "I've got what-itis??"). The other thing is that the body just doesn't bounce back as quickly (unlike a joke on Roy Clark's 1971 live album, where he said he was so good at bouncing back that the kids would come over and say, "Can Roy come out and bounce back for us?"). Then there's another quote, from the TV series M*A*S*H, when a lull in the action was broken by an onslaught of casualties. Trapper told Henry that the tan he'd acquired during the "down time" looked good, to which Henry replied, "Well, I'm paying for it now." When I was a teenager I loved to roller skate. I wasn't particularly good (there were kids half my age who were better skaters than I was) but I enjoyed the exercise and the good music to skate to (loved skating to "Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs and "Evil Woman" by ELO). Naturally, I fell a lot because I wasn't a very good skater. And my "technique," if you will, wasn't all that good (I had a nasty habit of just pushing off with my left foot instead of being coordinated and moving both feet, a habit I didn't break until I was in my late 20s). All of those muscles that I used incorrectly, and all those times I fell, are coming back to haunt me now. So last night I'm having a great time, dancing and not having too many pains. In the 90 minutes or so it takes to drive home all of those muscles decided to freeze in a sitting position. I got out of the car to open my gate when I got home and fell against the side of the house. You might have thought I was drunk the way I stumbled. What am I going to do about all of this pain that I find myself in after a couple of hours on my feet, dancing to honky tonk music? What do you think? Get therapy, get Tylenol, and go to more concerts! Here's the great Little Feat song "Old Folks' Boogie"