Sweat is starting to slide down between my eyes as my legs pump furiously on the new elliptical machine at the gym, this one designed to simulate the strides of a speed skater. My thighs and calves are burning and I’m only fifteen minutes in. It is my 4th such workout of the week, the 13th of the year, and most likely the 5000th of my life. Why do I so consistently volunteer myself for such torture? It is a complicated question which has many answers, none of them satisfactory. It is a stress relief. It does prevent me from ballooning to 300 pounds. It is, by all accounts, good for my heart. But mostly I do it because it gives me some sense that I am at least making an attempt to fight off the ravages of time, the slow, inexorable decline of physical and mental dexterity that comes with age. I mean, you can’t just shrug your shoulders and accept the inevitable, right? That would be entirely too logical and pragmatic. I much more prefer the illusion of control, the doomed notion that I, by sheer force of will and commitment, can keep the reaper at bay.
The television screen on the wall above me was broadcasting a football game. The New England Patriots were in trouble at the beginning of the 4th quarter of the AFC title game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. They had been outplayed the entire game by the younger, more athletic looking Jaguars. The closed caption script across the bottom of the screen is telling the viewer what a hard place that Tom Brady has found himself in, down 10 points to the league’s number one pass defense, having lost his best receiver to a concussion. Despite the growing pain in my legs from this brutal machine, I manage a smile. I think to myself...Where have these announcers been for the past 18 years?? Hard place, they say?
The sweat stream that started as a trickle was a full blown river by the time the 40 year old Brady hit Danny Amendola with a dart in the back of the end zone to win the game for the Patriots. The screen is then filled with the ridiculously handsome Brady surrounded by a bevy of cameras and reporters, all eager for a word from the man who will be making his 10th appearance in the Super Bowl. We have just watched him throw for 138 yards and two touchdowns in the 4th quarter of a championship game, saving his heroics until his back was against the wall for what seemed like the 1,000th time. My workout was over so I headed to the shower. I didn’t need to see the interview. I knew what he would say before he did...all the right things.
It is very easy to hate someone like Tom Brady, he of the matinee idol good looks, the super model wife, all the money in the world and a strangle hold on the title, Greatest of All Time. There’s plenty of nits to pick if you care to look. But, he has had a bullseye on his back in a violent sport for over nearly two decades now...and nobody has even come close to laying a glove on him. The fact that he is doing this at age 40, is perhaps the very easiest reason to hate the guy.
I sit in the steam room alone with my aching muscles. Every week these workouts get harder. With each passing year, their power to keep my weight under control weakens, my recovery time gets longer. Meanwhile, Tom Brady keeps on playing football at the highest level. Yes, he’s 40 and I’m getting ready for my 60th birthday. But, he plays football...while the most physically demanding part of my occupation involves putting paper in the copier.
I’m no longer a big pro football fan. I prefer college football and, of course, baseball. But, I watch when the playoffs come around. That means that when I’m watching, Tom Brady is most likely playing. I watch him engineer comeback after comeback with a mixture of resentment and admiration...resentment at his hoarding of unrivaled success, and admiration for his tenacious and so far victorious battle against time.
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