When did it happen? When did we get so old? Waking up the day after Thanksgiving, I felt like an 85-year old man coming off hip surgery. After one pick-up football game!
Every year my buddies and I come home for Thanksgiving break looking forward to free food, lots of sleep and our yearly football game. We used to play football all the time in high school, and the battles would be fierce. Nobody wanted to quit playing, and the final score usually ended up in the 50’s or 60’s. A Saturday grudge match would be overshadowed by a hard-fought battle on Sunday. We were invincible then. Oh, how the times have changed.
“Is it halftime yet,” one of my buddies remarked five minutes into the game. “I think I pulled my hamstring,” another friend said, only half kidding. “Hold up, I think I’m going to vomit,” was another popular retort. Yet, in this group of friends each one had substantial athletic ability. Keyword: had
My boy Luke was a four-sport varsity athlete in high school. He was captain of the soccer team and the place-kicker for the football team. He played varsity basketball one year, and quit the next to play ice hockey. Four years and 4,000 beers later he played center, and barely that, the entire game.
The passer on my team was a high school quarterback, but that didn’t stop him from putting up worse stats than Jeff Garcia in Baltimore. But how could I get mad at him for throwing seven interceptions in one game? We were all so out of shape and pitiful that it didn’t matter. I am an extremely competitive person, but even I had to laugh at the 15+ turnovers that marred our fourth annual Turkey Day game.
For the first time in our history together when someone said, “Okay, next score wins,” nobody opposed. Perhaps the shortened game was a good one in that it ended the three-year streak of at least one serious injury in the contest. Still, it made me wonder when we stopped being invincible. It seems like yesterday that I’d laugh at my older brothers when they’d return hobbling after a pick-up game. They always said, “just wait a few years and you’ll see,” and I have to admit, they were right on.
As I made some phone calls later that night to set up a post-game bar outing, I could tell my friends were as ashamed of their aging bodies as I was of mine. “I really want to go out, but I can’t move,” one friend said. “I’d sell an organ for some Percoset right now,” said another. We were all in bed by 11 p.m. that night, but little did we know how the pain would increase the next morning.
“Mom, help!” I yelled as I opened my eyes the next morning. I felt paralyzed from the top of my head to the end of my toes. I think every muscle in my body was at the same time saying, “never do that to us again.” Apparently the days of invincibility have passed. There were no calls for a grudge match the next day. Just getting out of bed and making it down the stairs for breakfast was enough of a struggle for us.
From now on, every time I decide to participating in a pick up game I’m going to have to weigh the odds of whether or not I can bear its effects. I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit. This becoming old and fragile part sucks.
