Lamentations, Chapter 3

I think I pulled a muscle in my butt today.

It happened while I was on my way from my office to the bathroom. I was walking quite briskly because, you know, I had to go pretty bad. Nothing serious- just a twinge, right there in the ol' right ass cheek. But it briefly put a little hitch in my giddyup, if you know what I mean.

I'm fortunate that it was not more serious, not so much because of the extraordinary inconvenience having a seriously pulled gluteus maximus would be, but rather because it occurred right in front of the door to the women's bathroom, which is just before the men's, and it would be just my karmic luck that I would be struck down by a failed butt muscle and forced to writhe on the floor, clutching my ass cheek, pissing on myself (I had to go really bad), right at the moment the entire female population of the floor decided they needed to visit the ladies' room.

Thankfully, I don't have to lament about that. Instead, I'd like to focus on the bigger picture, which is, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Dammit! I used to have days where I would work out for a couple hours in the gym, then play volleyball at lunch, then dance for 6 hours, and then go from there straight back to the gym to play full court basketball. And now I can't even go to the bathroom without injuring myself?

When I first started playing indoor league volleyball, I was 22 and living in LA. I would get to the games right before they started, change into my shorts, and start playing. I would see the old guys doing all their stretching, and warming up, and putting on the ankle and knee braces, and I would laugh at them inside my head. "Thank God I don't have to do all that!", I'd think.

Eventually I switched to beach volleyball, and didn't find myself playing indoor league volleyball again until I was living in Richmond, VA, which has no beaches. I was 31 then. And one day I'm going through my pregame ritual and one of the other guys on the team, who happened to be just out of college, shows up just before gametime. "Aren't you going to warm up?", asks the guy next to me. "Naw, I'm ready to play!" he says, and goes off to the hitting line.

And that's when I look down and see that, having just finished all my stretches, I'm pulling on my brand-new ankle brace, which I got to compensate for a soccer injury from the previous year. I was becoming one of those old dudes, and I hadn't even really realized it until just then. It's like in Return of the Jedi, where Luke looks down at his black Darthy hand prosthesis and realizes for the first time that he's on his way to becoming something he never ever thought he would.

After 35.5 years now, I have sprained my right ankle multiple times, dislocated both shoulders multiple times, broken both thumbs multiple times (try going through a whole day without using your dominant thumb. You will be hating life in about 8 minutes), fractured my jaw (hit by a Buick), broken my big toe, severely strained my right ACL (took a soccer cleat right on the side of the knee), and now apparently I may be in need of a new right ass cheek. My question is: what will it take to advance medical science to the point where they can grow new ones of those for me?

The answer is, probably like a trillion dollars in research money. But hey, we're the richest country on earth. We can afford a trillion dollars, right?

Oh no, no, wait, we took our trillion dollars and spent it on Iraq. Awesome. I guess I'll just spend the rest of the night massaging my ass and pondering what a great deal THAT was. I don't know why we couldn't have just used the Fidel Castro strategy and just ignored Saddam until he was dead. It would have been just as, if not more, effective at enhancing our national security as our current 'strategy' is, and it would have been, I dunno, about a trillion dollars cheaper. So instead of having a fancy new bionic ass, I have to watch my little brothers get sent over to Iraq to get shot at.

Damn.

In other news, my understanding of computers is so limited. Here I thought that when I selected "Yes" on the "Allow readers of this blog to post comments" item, it was going to allow readers of this blog to post comments. Shows you how little I know about how computers actually work. But after hearing reports of troubles posting comments, I changed who can post comments to "anyone", and so now even your dead (or undead) grandma can post comments.

And Lord knows, I wouldn't want to deprive anyone of the right to post comments about my sprained ass cheek...