By Shaun Tumpane
Laguna Woods Globe columnist
I was recently talking with my youngest son, the personal trainer, and he was lamenting a nagging groin pull. He shared that he first injured his groin while training for the international CrossFit Games when he was 23 years old.
After a regimen of cold and warm compresses, four days later his groin showed no ill effects from the injury. Now, 12 years later, he re-injured the same muscle, and it took four weeks for the pain to subside.
I was about to respond with, “You’re talking to Noah about the flood”; however, he beat me to it by saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dad, I know. I’m lucky I’m young, you’re old. All you and your friends talk about is who’s living with the most pain, whether Relief Factor actually works, how you all should get to the fitness center, and I don’t know how good I have it. You really need some new material, Pops!”
In lieu of the usual snappy retort having something to do with current events about which neither he nor the lion’s share of his generation would have a clue, I just laughed out loud, cuz let’s face it, he’s not wrong.
The funniest facet of our chat was how he, at the tender age of 35, used the phrase “When I was young.” Not younger, young.
Compare that to a conversation I had wherein I referred to some of my golfing buddies in their 60s as “the young guys.” We all know that just like an automobile (do we still call them that?), it’s not the years, it’s the mileage, to quote Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Now, we can sit here and wail about the consequences of our many, many bad choices, i.e., smoking three packs a day, using the “I’m about to pass out” thought as the first and only alert your brain issues when you chronically overindulge in adult beverages, or asking “What does LSD stand for” only after you’ve ingested lysergic acid diethylamide.
Never mind that LSD is made from the fungus ergot, which should give one pause, and that English majors point out that the acronym should be LAD.
Yes, it’s the mileage, all right.
My son exercises more in 30 days than I have in the last 30 years. When I do occasionally drag my sagging posterior to the fitness center, I AM impressed by how many of my fellow geriatrics avail themselves of the facility. I keep telling myself that once ____________ is over (fill in the blank with the excuse of the day), I’m going to start exercising religiously. (Full disclosure, I haven’t exactly been a fixture at St. Nick’s Catholic Church either.)
Drop and give me 20! OK, 10! 5?
Shaun Tumpane is a Laguna Woods Village resident.
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