Knowing is aging

Ramblings Post #66
This year I had a birthday I've always envisioned as something so far off it was always ages and ages away. And now that I am that age I used to laugh at, karma has come in from doing the yard and started pointing out all those little things I used to think should never have to me. Not the big stuff, the little stuff. What little stuff? Read on...

Wanna know how you know you're old?

When you hurt yourself, not playing basketball, or working in the yard, or slipping in the bathtub, but reaching for the alarm clock.

I have a horrible habit in that I've found out, or figured out, how to turn off my alarm clock in my sleep. Well, not turn off but hit the snooze. Which is kinda why my alarm is set for 6am, but I don't actually wake until well after 7am.

To combat this I move the clock around the nightstand, to the floor, to the other side of the bed, etc. I'm considering buying another alarm clock that requires more than a button tap to get to the snooze part. I've also considered sleeping with someone who'll actually get up when the alarm goes off. Let's just say there are plans in "flux".

But Monday morning, as the alarm went off for what had to be the 8th or 9th time I reached out this time semi-awake to get a few more minutes. The clock was just out of my reach. Apparently the previous time I'd hit the snooze when I rolled back over into the covers I had rolled a little farther away. I stretched out just a touch. Didn't make it. I stretched a little more...

...and my wrist popped.

I was damn sure awake then. I could move my fingers and all that, but it sure hurt like hell.

I hurt myself trying to turn off my alarm clock. I've been in car accidents, run into walls and doors, and nothing hurt quite like this. I mean this hurt like a mofo. I could barely hold a pen and doing all the things I normally do one handed really wasn't the move.

And hurt till this morning. Maybe it was a wrist sprain.

I started to get gray at 22, so that really wasn't a feeling of being old to me when the gray started coming in a little stronger. And I've been out running the streets since sometime in late 80's, from college to my hometown and finally in Atlanta for a decade, so my slowing down and getting a little weary of the "scene" didn't strike me as me getting old, I'd had my good time, and some of yours. But hurting yourself just moving? I mean damn. Is there another sign of being old?

Maybe I'll get me some vitamins or something.

Barkeep, let me get a Centrum Martini.