Sore. So … sore. Not pain. Pain is more specific. It signals injury. That you hurt one thing, in one specific place. It’s isolated. But not sore. Sore is everywhere. Sore is kind of a … creaky funk? An all-over malaise. An affliction. A general misery.
Sore is … well … sore is getting older.
This occurred to me the other day as I bent over to pick up a piece of trash outside my office. Thanks to gravity, I had no trouble getting down there. But as I faced the prospect of standing back up, my body creaked and groaned like a diesel-belching steam shovel. “OWWCHHHH!” I moaned as I got back to my feet. It must have been terrifying because two college students observing this whole episode in the hallway stared in horror. “Are you ok?” they asked. I think they nearly ran to get a defibrillator. Or maybe a shovel, figuring it was better to whack me over the head, put me out of my misery and bury me in the back parking lot.
“I think … I think … I’m getting old,” I told them, out of breath and propped up against the wall.
“Yep, by the looks of it, I would say you’re there,” one of them said. “Maybe you should see someone about that.”
Yep … maybe I should.
So sore!
I’ve been re-doing my mother’s kitchen cabinets with my brother, and because my IQ is embarrassingly low, I figured this was also a good time to make some major changes to my laundry room. A little drywall here. Some paint over there. New cabinets and generally anything that can swallow every minute of a weekend. It’s not difficult work, per se, but it requires lots of ups and downs, bending over, lifting things, drinking beer very early in the morning. House project stuff!
Not grueling, but sore-inducing.
And I have found that a 46-year-old body thinks these kinds of things are repulsive and a major drag. Didn’t used to be. No, it was never an issue before. Never anything to dwell on. Never anything that left you so achy the next week that you have to ask your wife, “Seriously, hon, did you beat me with a 2X4 again last night while I was asleep? You can’t do that!”
Weird muscles in my thighs ache. My fingers are stiff and throb. I went to make coffee one morning and found myself in a heap on the floor crying, “Just … can’t … do … it! Teaspoon is TOO heavy!”
My daughter finished it for me. “There, there, sad pathetic man,” she said. “Let’s get you back in your rocking chair.”
And then there is the part that makes me the most sore: When people tell me, “Now, take it slow. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Wowzers! I don’t know if it’s muscular, skeletal or some kind of nerve thing, but that just shoots through me like deranged lightning.
“Not as young as I used to be?” What does that even mean?!? Like a baby could do this better than me? That’s just cruel. True, but cruel!
And I am doing it. I’m sore, and can barely apply paperclips to sheets of paper, but I’m not slowing down. Forget you, soreness! I’ll just get someone else to stir my coffee from now on.