Momentum Mori

My chest has stopped hurting, so that's good.

Getting old holds no special terror for me.* Further, my interior monologue is uncharitable to people who complain about how old they feel. "You have been aging since you were a zygote. There's no surprise in it; you can't say you weren't warned. This is life. Also, you will later die. Let me break that one to you ahead of time."

I'm mostly resigned to aging, but I am interested in growing older, because people tend to know more things and make fewer horrifying mistakes when they are older, which are both attractive qualities to me.

Also, I have never been particularly "cool" which is conquered, occupied, territory of the young. There was a shining moment in the early '90s when grunge appeared, and fashion and I had a moment together, like sharing a taxi. Then we got out at our respective destinations and now... shiny blue ties? Are those still in?

So the chief benefit I saw in being a noticeably young man was the indestructibility. You jump off a 12-foot ledge, land wrong, your foot hurts -- six hours later, it's an editable detail in the hilarious tale of your Croatian friend, Kresimir, losing his keys. Pain was this thing that happened sometimes, and then you ate a bag of Doritos. The end.

I'm still not old, right? But the indestructibility is gone, which manifests in two distinctly horrible ways. First, lack of exercise is much more obvious when you behave strenuously. I used to never exercise and then walk up a mountain for fun and continue not exercising the next day. Easy.

Second, when a pain appears that you haven't had before, you begin to wonder, "What if this doesn't heal right? Is this the new normal? " Six hours, thirty-six hours, seventy-two hours later, it's still there, and you wonder, "Will my chest ache forever when I sneeze or turn sharply to the left? I don't know!"

Because, see, we went to Club Med on our honeymoon. We went to a "Sport" Club Med, which was fantastically entertaining, except that I am not a sportsy person. I am the sort of person who labors over a blog entry in a darkened room. And yet, I was quietly very, very excited at the prospect of learning to swing on a flying trapeze. It was, with no exaggeration, the fulfillment of a childhood fantasy.

Not swinging on a trapeze in a circus. That always seemed remote and not as thrilling as billed. I mean, there's a net below. Big deal. But why would you do it without a net? That's bad judgment. So trapeze as a performance art seemed... untenable.

The childhood fulfillment part was literally swinging on a trapeze at Club Med. I saw it as a child on some exotic travel show, and it seemed like the coolest vacation thing ever. You could go on vacation and learn to swing on a trapeze? Why doesn't everyone want to do that?

One possible reason is because it hurts. The skin on your hands gets ripped off, and in the following days you ache in places you didn't know you had muscles. It's a blast; I had a wonderful time; I'd go back and do it again, but man, ow.

And then it keeps hurting. This morning I noticed my chest hadn't hurt in a while. I stretched and breathed and twisted my torso. No pain. It's not the new normal. It's just the beginning of destructability.

Which helps explain why older people make fewer horrifying mistakes. In addition to experience, they don't have the physical capacity for it.

* Regular terror applies normally, of course.