Body by jerk

Our bodies are jerks. When we’re young, they’re seemingly invincible vessels -- prone to the odd scrape or broken bone, but generally lithe and gazelle-like, spriting us from one location to the next with a bouncy newness we take for granted. Then we get older and they betray us, degenerating into a taught coil of various aches and pains. By degrees, they make the transition from new and practical Ford Focus to rusty and rickety Chrysler Lebaron. Even then, Lebarons are one-up on us, because at least they can be used as storage for old snow shovels.

Nobody warned me it would happen so quickly. One minute you think aches and pains are strictly a problem for the elderly; the next, you’re sitting across the kitchen table from your cousin, swapping stories about sore backs and stiff necks, trying to out-pain each other. Bodily decline becomes a competition, except no one actually wins. Maybe the good folks at Tylenol.

That exact scenario took place a couple of weekends ago. My cousin and his parents, now denizens of the tacky neon strip mall known as Florida, made a rare visit to Maine and spent most of a late-spring Sunday at my parents’ home in Lewiston, chatting about vacations and politics over glasses of sticky red wine. Interestingly, the topic of corporeal anguish never came up among the older set. Maybe it’s something you just get used to, like baldness or that odd goiter shaped like Mrs. Butterworth.

“Bart,” as I’ll call my dear cousin, is a couple of years younger than me, and growing up he was the closest thing I ever had to a brother; I’m confident he would say the same about me, since he was an only child and spent much of his time with an obese housecat I’m pretty sure was blind. Until I was 12 or so, I’d see Bart several times a year, playing the angel to his reckless maverick. Then he and the ‘rents hightailed it to the Gulf coast to be closer to Mickey, and he became one of those family members you see “every once in a while,” which in our case means weddings, funerals and anniversary parties for couples married before the advent of touch-tone telephones. Life pulls us in different directions. We do what we can.

Sometimes years pass between visits, but we always pick up more or less where we left off -- as though the intervening time was just a brief hiccup in a lifelong conversation. We are currently at the “Ouch! My back!” stage of our relationship. He’s got a mutinous knee. I’ve got a spine that occasionally feels like a beer can being crushed against a drunkard’s skull. Lacking any fair warning, we’ve gone from wrestling in the backyard to absent-mindedly rubbing our sore spots while whining about doctors and X-rays, braces and muscle creams. Our only recompense is that at least we’re now old enough to drink Miller High Life and use words like “ass” around our parents.

The whole thing took us by surprise, but should it have? It’s possible we just ignored the warning signs. Professional athletes offer us a cautionary tale. Many start their careers young -- some are in their late teens -- and you can catch a strong whiff of their new-car smells even if you’re watching them on TV. The zig, they zag, they dive and hit the ground and get right back up again, and they do it all again the next day because they can (and because in some cases they’re getting paid one-and-one-half bazillion dollars).

That’s a pro athlete at, say, 20 years old. Catch up with them at 35 and it’s a different scene. They’re constantly massaging their shoulders, they’re slow to get up off the field, and when they’re interviewed by reporters after the game -- usually while holding ice packs to their groins -- they look like they’ve just been roughed up by a gang of biker gorillas. Note to self: Write a screenplay about biker gorillas.

Thirty-five is not remotely old. Not even close. But it’s old enough for systems to start breaking down, and Bart and I should have known it, watching past-their-prime athletes like Roger Clemens wincing their way onto the field. We made the common youthful mistake that everything lasts and the future will never arrive, and now we’re paying for it. It doesn’t help that we have the doughy bodies of chocolatiers.

As discouraging as this revelation can be, though, I choose to remain positive about it. We’re entering a new phase, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If the previous phase was all about pushing our bodies to their biological limits, this new epoch sees our bodies playing more of a support role, acting as a transport device for our brains -- placing it in front of people worth talking to and places worth seeing. And food worth eating. Especially food worth eating.

When you consider a guy like the late Christopher Reeve, Bart and I complaining about swollen ankles seems pretty trivial. The man who played Superman in the 1970s (and who was never bettered in this department) became a quadriplegic about 20 years ago after a horseriding accident, and yet he was probably more active afterward, becoming an advocate for stem cell research and returning to film to act and direct. Way to make my cousin and me feel like weenies, Christopher. The next time we see each other and start whimpering about our carpal tunnel syndrome, I’ll whip out a picture of the Man of Steel just to give myself a much-needed jolt of shame. Which I’ll probably forget about as soon as I tweak my neck.

There’s no telling how long it’ll be before I see Bart again, but perhaps we can start using the various stages of life as benchmarks for when a good catch-up session may be appropriate. Now it’s muscle soreness and crappy bones. When we start needing special glasses to read the nutritional information on a can of peas, we’ll know it’s time to schedule a visit.