Now nothing drives home the point of one's own mortality than reproducing, it amazes me how suddenly time stands still and zips by simultaneously once you become responsible for tiny humans, when i think that the I-mac is going to be a decade old this year it's baffling, i mean wasn't i just wiping his ass and feeding him?, not at the same time obviously but still it wasn't that long ago was it? and then i realize Zidane was still playing, Dubya was wrecking shit, i was still running the streets, Smallville was popular, there was a shite Pink Panther remake, it feels ancient, as if i should be using an abacus, and yet it was only ten years, i'm in much better shape now than i was then, in the years prior to the I-mac exercise was a teener for happy hour and an eight ball for the evening, it was like running a marathon all while chain smoking cigarettes and guzzling heroic amounts of booze, it was going to bed at sunrise and getting up at 4pm and attempting to function but instead nodding off at every possible moment from the marathon i sprinted the night before, it was a disaster but there i stood like Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, unflinching and proud as the bombs rained down around me, ah but these days, these days things are quite different...
It's always the little things now innit? like a paper cut or a scab on Robert Marley's toe, innocuous things, little reminders, like when you pay off the car and all sorts of little pieces start falling off and start malfunctioning, how after never needing glasses in my life i realize that once it's past 8pm or so i could probably use some reading glasses, how the right ankle is so fucked because of the old battles with gout and basketball, an ankle that can now painfully predict rain within a few hours, a chronically sore back, the sort of aches and pains i used to walk right through as if they didn't exist but now must grudgingly acknowledge their existence, of course had i read the handbook closer at the Big World Bank Machine i wouldn't have spent so many days hobbling around on some painful, bum, ankle but what kind of square reads the fucking handbook from their employer? I'll tell you... a smart one, with a good ankle and not the dumb ass with a bum one...
Years ago when i was still playing at playground legend i would run some ball a couple times a week up at this school, it was there one day that i got into a scuffle with a guy over some imaginary elbows he thought were thrown at his head, with a very slick and incredibly cheap move he pulled a takedown move on me and since i didn't want to smash face first into the blacktop i put my left arm straight down to stop myself... after a few friendly words between us i began to throw my one good elbow with regularity at my man's head, somehow i played a few more games and then went home knowing my arm was fucked. That night as i slept if it moved at all i would wake up with searing pain that felt like it was wracking my entire left side, a few days later the doc said he couldn't believe i didn't rupture every tendon in my arm, somehow it was all still intact and would heal on it's own. This was some 17-18 years ago now, so what am i getting at?
A couple weeks back good old Nick Disaster popped a fever, one of those kiddie fevers that shows up and disappears along with a fine case of the sniffles, elementary schools are second only to day cares in the breeding of disease and illness, he hadn't missed a day all year so even though his fever was gone he got to stay home and have a day on the couch and hang with his old man, at one point we decided to play a little Wii, first tennis and then nine holes of golf... now i should state that i absolutely fucking hate playing golf, i can admire the skill involved but i really don't have the patience to smack that little white ball all over creation and then chase it around, but having never played this video version before i thought why not? turned out it was kinda neat and besides Nick Disaster and i were having fun, of course even on the virtual links frustration set in and i'm quite positive i was over-swinging and not giving the weight of the controller a second thought but just swinging my arms like i was big, fat, John Daly and trying to crush shit... hindsight now lends credence to the theory that this was a rather stupid move, needless to say Nick D beat me by three strokes, he shrugged and grinned and said, "nice game dad", he was fucking with me...
And so about an hour later mortality began to rear it's ugly mug, i kept getting these shooting pains in my arm, they got worse and worse and while they weren't paralyzing they were quite fucking annoying and painful, i had no idea what i could have done? i began to think, i'd been painting and priming walls and baseboards and moving shit over the last few days but nothing struck me and not once did i feel anything in my arm, but every time i'd bend it or move it a certain way there it was... and then it hit me, the fucking Wii, i made the motion i had made playing golf and there went a seismic pain, like that night so long ago after my run in on the hoop court, i had hurt my damn arm, inflamed my tendons and muscle all by playing the Wii, a fucking video game, you want to feel old? fucking go on the IR because of video elbow, i grinned and beared it, after a few days and no relief in sight i broke down and bought a brace, two actually, Jah helped to take the edge off the pain each night, someday i get the feeling that i'm gonna have to get that shit fixed, a couple weeks on and i'm still wearing a wrap, like Santiago i'm trying to beat back the sharks but my sharks are years and just like the sharks to the marlin those years will devour me, some already have, and so that is the tale, of the Old Man and the Wii...
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