My knees are older than the rest of me

A recent and unwelcome development: my knees are aging, and somewhat more quickly than the rest of me. I discovered this while walking downstairs one morning a couple of weeks ago. “Shit,” I said at the first twinge from my right knee. “Fuck,” I said after taking a step with the other leg. And so it went, one step and expletive after another, all the way down to the first floor.

Some of you - perhaps many of you - are probably saying “Welcome to it, pal” right about now. An achy knee is just one of the milestones on the road to oblivion, and even people in better physical shape than me have experienced this. So no, I don’t consider myself special - just especially annoyed.

The ankles are also giving me trouble, I’ve noticed. These joints are most bothersome immediately upon waking, and - like the engine of an old Buick Regal - tend to operate more smoothly after they’ve had a chance to warm up. I could probably go on, but this laundry list is starting to get me down.

There are a couple of possible remedies for this rusty-hinge joint situation. One of them is fish oil. I used to take the supplement on a regular basis, and my knees and ankles seldom complained. Something about reducing inflammation, or something like that. The problem with fish oil is the same general problem I have with medication, supplements, and the like: I often forget to take it, or else can’t be bothered, as though there’s something much better that I could be doing at the time. This behavior goes way back to childhood, when I would rather pocket my One A Day vitamin rather than swallow it. At the end of the week, when laundry day came, my mother would find my pants pockets full of little red tablets. Or yellow tablets, if she had purchased One A Day with Iron that week.

Even now, there are ten or twelve capsules of fish oil in a pill container sitting a foot away from me, waiting for my attention. Eat us, they cry. Eeeeeat us. So plaintive. So very sad.

Another countermeasure available to me is…exercise. (Shudder.) I have had it explained to me by more than one physical therapist that my knees would benefit from exercises that strengthen the surrounding, supporting muscles. I have not been the workout enthusiast I had been a year or two ago. I could blame happenstance, or scheduling conflicts, or absentmindedness, but the sad truth is that I am unforgivably lazy. My knobby knees are now paying the price of my lassitude. That kind of real-world consequence of inaction is an even harder pill to swallow than a One A Day.

This the part of the story where I vow to do better, I guess. Take the damn pills. Bend, stretch, lift a frigging weight now and again. I wonder why I’m so resistant, even now, even after having acknowledged all that?

Actually, when you ask that kind of question aloud, you already know the answer. Best to save that topic for another blog entry, though. Right now, I have to go take these pills.