Yesterday morning I was getting dressed for church. Pam had just stepped in the shower. I sat down in a rocking chair in the bedroom where I discovered that I could not bend over far enough to put on my socks.
Yes friends, nothing quite says good morning, old man like the inability to dress yourself. I sat there for a minute trying different techniques for putting socks on but none of them worked. So…what to do? I could just sit there and wait for Pam to get out of the shower but that seemed too pathetic. I eventually decided that I would do some stretching and try to limber up my ailing back which had the effect of adding an extra inch to my bending over capability, just enough to allow me to successful complete my sock installation. The entire process took nearly five minutes.
When I told Pam of my sock experience she made the following bland assertion: “You know that this happens to you every fall, right?”
I was not, in fact, aware of any such thing. Of course I knew that this wasn’t the first time I haven’t been able to put my socks on, but I hadn’t connected the phenomenon to the calendar. But my wife has a knack for remembering important things, while my memory is limited almost exclusively to worthless trivia. She went on to explain that every Fall when I begin the weeks long job of getting up the leaves in my yard, my back begins its rebellion with a series of painful spasms. As soon as she says this I know that she is right. Over the past four or five days I have filled 24 forty-two gallon bags with leaves, the first installment of the over fifty such bags I will fill before the last of them are gone.
She then made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that perhaps I should farm this job out to the professionals, by which she means—anyone but me.
She is right, of course. A bad back doesn’t mix well with leaf removal.
The problem is that although I complain about it every year, the truth is I enjoy getting up the leaves. The weather has finally gotten cooler, its as beautiful outsides as it ever gets, and there is an enormous sense of accomplishment when you finish and see the beautiful green grass of your lawn and the impressive line of black bags lining the fence. It’s a marvelous feeling.
But then suddenly you can’t put on your socks. You limp around for several days afterwards tentatively, hoping and praying that your back doesn’t seize up and throw you on the ground.
Me: But Hon…look at that beautiful stack of black bags!!
Pam: …..eyeroll….
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