If you've lasted still longer, you may understand the more complete fragment which goes:
Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain clings cruelly to us. . . .
Never mind visiting pleasure. Never mind love and loss, joy and pain.
My topic today is the game of football.
Relax! I'm not going to complain about the endless menu of college and professional ballgames currently determining whatcha-call-it championships. I'm an aging coot: I could care less who wins what, or even how. I have no dog in any fight. And no complaints about who wins or loses.
In fact, I have no complaints about the current game of football. It appears to me to be a much better game than the one we played years ago when the helmets were leather and there were prominent laces on the ball -- actual laces. No kidding. And the ball was slightly fatter, too.
Never mind the possibility of concussion-related early-onset dementia. Never mind youthful ex-ballplayers with crippling injuries. Never mind supposed gangsterism on some teams. Never mind dashed hopes or dreams fulfilled. Never mind scandal of any sort.
What I wanna complain about is my OWN old football injuries.
'Scuse me! Could be the worst injury is that nobody left alive seems to remember what a sparkling star I truly was. In fact, the older I get, the better I remember playing. Alas: nothing left but my wounds. No matter. Don't prompt me: modesty deprives me of telling my entire heroic grid-iron story.
Talk aboutcher heroism: no face-masks in those good-old-days. No need, however, to speak of how we more-bravely faced the old game: my face tells that sad story. We may not have been tougher in the early 1950's. But we were uglier. The hooks and bumps on my nose and several deviations of septa are evidence I kept running into people I might have better avoided.
As I remember, I was a runner who ran too often into instead of around or by the defensive players our offensive plays were designed to avoid. But never mind.
I digress!
INJURIES? Besides multiple injuries to my pride, I have two semi-serious physical injuries that have plagued me over sixty years.
The first sad story is about my right knee. Multiple injuries in 1952: torn meniscus and lateral cartilage and torn ACL ended any serious thoughts of playing beyond high school. Seemed important at the time. However, when I see how kids get banged up playing football today, I'm inclined to think my knee injury spared me some longer-term grief.
In 1953, I had an operation that reconstructed the knee well enough to make it quite serviceable.
Still, over the years, I managed to mess it up sufficiently by biking, skiing, playing tennis, and running marathons and 5k's. Boys will be boys.
I had the knee replaced in 1995. Talk aboutcher miracles of modern surgery: "pain [which] clings cruelly" largely vanished. While that knee currently forecasts the weather, it does so very quietly.
And while the knee's not exactly right, it doesn't discourage my yoga, long walks, stair-climbing, or garden chores. Astonishingly: it often curtails my house-cleaning chores. Go figger. . . .
My second injury was a shoulder separation. My coach reassured me at the time: "Don't worry. It's only partial." Over the next twenty years I came to realize that the only part of my shoulder that was injured was the part that had actually worked before the injury.
Only much later did I learn that my coach had been a championship intercollegiate boxer who had apparently warded off too many blows with his head -- leaving him partially smart.
I identify. My shoulder pain "clings cruelly," but I have never seriously considered surgery. The shoulder has always functioned well enough, and the pain has not been serious enough for me to feel forced to do something about it. How to put it? While the pain is sometimes nagging, it is easily ignored. My shoulder works okay, thank-you-very-much.
I'm probably something like your Grampa: I know in advance -- without recourse to the weather channel -- when various forms of precipitation will soon arrive.
Plus I have recourse to Aspercreme and other palliatives. and I have this nifty hand-vibrator I often use to massage-in the creme. This old shoulder often has me wallowing in the hot-tub on my back deck. Boy! You find that special jet and lean into it. Now there's luxury. What else: I've learned NOT to sleep on my left side. Or roll over on that shoulder and have my sweet dreams interrupted.
I can't decide? What is it about these old injuries to knee and shoulder? Is it because I'm aging that the pain seems so present and new? Or is it because I so fondly associate the pain with the new dreams of my lost youth that it persists.
Sounds silly, perhaps: but when I wake-up each morning, I stretch and settle down into my body, rotate that shoulder fondly and kneed it firmly with my fingers. I massage the knee, gently slip the knee-cap hither and yon. A few luxurious stretches and I'm ready to roll outa bed.
The pain is slight. I've grown accustomed to its presence. It's kinda like being greeted by two old friends.
My topic today is the game of football.
Relax! I'm not going to complain about the endless menu of college and professional ballgames currently determining whatcha-call-it championships. I'm an aging coot: I could care less who wins what, or even how. I have no dog in any fight. And no complaints about who wins or loses.
In fact, I have no complaints about the current game of football. It appears to me to be a much better game than the one we played years ago when the helmets were leather and there were prominent laces on the ball -- actual laces. No kidding. And the ball was slightly fatter, too.
And the teams were smaller. Not these immense mobs that now stand stretched endlessly along the sidelines, denying spectators any reasonable view of plays our side of the field:
And there were cheerleaders way back then. Real ones. They usually strayed no further than between the two forty yard lines. Those were the true glory days of high-school and college football -- when you could get knocked out of bounds and have a reasonable chance of looking up a cheerleader's skirt.
Those were the true moments of the game. Those were the days: everybody knew why they were playing the game.
But I'm not complaining about the old game I played, or the current game. Mayhem and injuries notwithstanding: the game is better than ever. Maybe over-exposed some. But nobody has to watch every game televised.
Miraculous catch! In-bounds? Who can tell?
Long gain nullified?
Stepped outa bounds? Don't-ask-me!?
Forty-five gigantic stander-arounders
with numbers on their backs blocked the view. . . .
And there were cheerleaders way back then. Real ones. They usually strayed no further than between the two forty yard lines. Those were the true glory days of high-school and college football -- when you could get knocked out of bounds and have a reasonable chance of looking up a cheerleader's skirt.
Those were the true moments of the game. Those were the days: everybody knew why they were playing the game.
But I'm not complaining about the old game I played, or the current game. Mayhem and injuries notwithstanding: the game is better than ever. Maybe over-exposed some. But nobody has to watch every game televised.
Never mind the possibility of concussion-related early-onset dementia. Never mind youthful ex-ballplayers with crippling injuries. Never mind supposed gangsterism on some teams. Never mind dashed hopes or dreams fulfilled. Never mind scandal of any sort.
What I wanna complain about is my OWN old football injuries.
'Scuse me! Could be the worst injury is that nobody left alive seems to remember what a sparkling star I truly was. In fact, the older I get, the better I remember playing. Alas: nothing left but my wounds. No matter. Don't prompt me: modesty deprives me of telling my entire heroic grid-iron story.
Talk aboutcher heroism: no face-masks in those good-old-days. No need, however, to speak of how we more-bravely faced the old game: my face tells that sad story. We may not have been tougher in the early 1950's. But we were uglier. The hooks and bumps on my nose and several deviations of septa are evidence I kept running into people I might have better avoided.
As I remember, I was a runner who ran too often into instead of around or by the defensive players our offensive plays were designed to avoid. But never mind.
I digress!
INJURIES? Besides multiple injuries to my pride, I have two semi-serious physical injuries that have plagued me over sixty years.
The first sad story is about my right knee. Multiple injuries in 1952: torn meniscus and lateral cartilage and torn ACL ended any serious thoughts of playing beyond high school. Seemed important at the time. However, when I see how kids get banged up playing football today, I'm inclined to think my knee injury spared me some longer-term grief.
In 1953, I had an operation that reconstructed the knee well enough to make it quite serviceable.
Still, over the years, I managed to mess it up sufficiently by biking, skiing, playing tennis, and running marathons and 5k's. Boys will be boys.
I had the knee replaced in 1995. Talk aboutcher miracles of modern surgery: "pain [which] clings cruelly" largely vanished. While that knee currently forecasts the weather, it does so very quietly.
And while the knee's not exactly right, it doesn't discourage my yoga, long walks, stair-climbing, or garden chores. Astonishingly: it often curtails my house-cleaning chores. Go figger. . . .
My second injury was a shoulder separation. My coach reassured me at the time: "Don't worry. It's only partial." Over the next twenty years I came to realize that the only part of my shoulder that was injured was the part that had actually worked before the injury.
Only much later did I learn that my coach had been a championship intercollegiate boxer who had apparently warded off too many blows with his head -- leaving him partially smart.
I identify. My shoulder pain "clings cruelly," but I have never seriously considered surgery. The shoulder has always functioned well enough, and the pain has not been serious enough for me to feel forced to do something about it. How to put it? While the pain is sometimes nagging, it is easily ignored. My shoulder works okay, thank-you-very-much.
I'm probably something like your Grampa: I know in advance -- without recourse to the weather channel -- when various forms of precipitation will soon arrive.
Plus I have recourse to Aspercreme and other palliatives. and I have this nifty hand-vibrator I often use to massage-in the creme. This old shoulder often has me wallowing in the hot-tub on my back deck. Boy! You find that special jet and lean into it. Now there's luxury. What else: I've learned NOT to sleep on my left side. Or roll over on that shoulder and have my sweet dreams interrupted.
I can't decide? What is it about these old injuries to knee and shoulder? Is it because I'm aging that the pain seems so present and new? Or is it because I so fondly associate the pain with the new dreams of my lost youth that it persists.
Sounds silly, perhaps: but when I wake-up each morning, I stretch and settle down into my body, rotate that shoulder fondly and kneed it firmly with my fingers. I massage the knee, gently slip the knee-cap hither and yon. A few luxurious stretches and I'm ready to roll outa bed.
The pain is slight. I've grown accustomed to its presence. It's kinda like being greeted by two old friends.
"Pain clings cruelly?"
Not so much any more.
Not so much any more.
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ReplyDeleteTwo and a half decades after the fact, I proudly viewed your football & track and field achievements in Crown Point High School's trophy case. Since the records were left intact for all Bulldogs to celebrate, I thought I'd disrupt your stride toward humility and brag a little about my Dad! Weather Forecaster, maybe. Great athlete, for-sure!
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