The Pain of Old Age -by JiM Norris
Where do the aches and pains come from as we grow older?
How about that bike you crashed when you were young? Or the tree you fell out of?
That is for starters. I was thrown off a horse a few times. Ran into a tall patch of weeds a disk was hiding in those weeds. Cut my knee. Fifty years later that knee had to be replaced.
Oh the fun we had when we were young. We thought we got past all of these things.
Did we? Just think back to the things we did that may have been waiting for the right time, to come back to make us pay for all that fun. (Some of the fun things were worth it.)
As we grew older and slowed down our muscles lose some of their get up and go.
Could it be the aches and pains have been like the poppy seed? Poppy seeds can lay dormant for 100 years. When conditions are right they start to grow.
What about hearing? It may not be pain - but it is a pain not hearing.
Some may have listened to loud music or worked in loud places without ear protection. I did.
Aunt Wilma is one hundred and three. Last week she had her pace maker replaced. They told her that it would be good for another ten years.
Another thing I wonder about are buttonholes. As our fingers start to get stiff, could button holes start growing smaller? Some of mine sure seem to be getting harder to button.
We don’t let these things stop us. We keep using what God gave us and keep going.
Early in his career Jim worked for the Climax Mine outside of Leadville, then on the Roberts Tunnel project followed by a stint as a bus driver for the city of Denver where he joined the Westminster volunteer fire department. He ultimately took a job with the Fort Collins Fire department from which he retired 33 years later.
