I Got Old Wrong. Can I Have a Do-Over?

I'm supposed to vent today. Gave it a go, but the effort just faded. I'm at low energy.

Wish I was young again. Not because it's so especially bad being as old as I am, but because it is bad being as old as I am and not knowing what to do or how to achieve dreams. When one is young, particularly in their twenties, no one really expects you to know anything, so knowing anything makes you kind of impressive. I was impressive. When I was young. But not that impressive. Now I'm not impressive at all, except as an example of how not to wind up.

I don't know that I would want to go back in time and relive my life knowning what I know now. What a drag it would be knowing how I was going to f*ck up my life years in advance.

On the other hand, it would be cool, for perhaps I could avoid the absolute S-T-U-P-I-D mistakes I have made in my life. Probably wouldn't, though. I'd still be a coward, and most of my decisions were based on fear even more than desire. I had the reputation of being "the good kid". I didn't get it because I was a good kid. I got it because I was too afraid to do anything. Served me well in staying out of certain kinds of trouble. A royal pain in the *ss when it held me back from the things I very much wanted to try.

I did do some things, but not many. I remember the summer I was in a sling from a biking accident.

Stephen had wanted a new car. The old Falcon he had purchased from Judayl had finally died and he was without motorized transportation. I had this terrible old Chevy Vega hatchback. He offered to trade me even - his ten-speed bicyle for my Vega. I jumped at the offer. The Vega went through oil and gas like corn meal through geese. So I used the Raleigh to get from here to there.

While biking down (up?) East River Road, along the Mississippi, I came upon a low place where the road I was on ducked under a crossroad. I hit the drop faster than I wanted and ceased peddaling, but my speed had increased. Motorized traffic was restricted to 30 m.p.h. and I remember passing a vehicle. When I came out of the tunnel I crossed over to the center island in preparation for my upcoming turn. Unfortunately, my momentum took me to the curb and, first my front wheel, and then my back, wound up sliding along the curb. I couldn't steer. Knowing I in trouble, I considered how best to handle the thing. The brakes tended to grab, and I wasn't keen on dealing with that in the middle of a busy road. There was the concrete center. Perhaps if I were to carefully get off the bike I could let the bike go and run myself to a stop. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I remember seeing the sky and nothing else. Then I saw the ground coming up at me fast. I dipped my head and rolled. The bike bounced away and I bounced along the center island. I lay quiet, letting my adrenaline settle down. No pain. That was good. I wasn't hurt then. I heard the screeching of tires. Then the sound of running feet. A man knelt beside me and asked me if I was hurt bad. I said I was fine. Just catching my breath. He asked if I had been hit and I said no. Then I sat up. New information.

The pain was so bad I nearly passed out. I lay back until the nausea went away. Then I tried again. It was my shoulder. It hurt. I reached my hand up, but I couldn't feel my shoulder. What was wrong?

Paramedics arrived. They were really nice. The one explained to me that my shoulder was no completely separated from my collar, and that when I sat up, my shoulder stayed down on the ground. Ouch.

I spent several hours in one hospital, drifing in and out of consciousness. After about ten hours my mother (who had shown up at some point) took me from that hospital and brought me to Hennepin General in Minneapolis. They fixed me up in about an hour. My fate was to spend the next two months in a harness, designed to hold my shoulder up until it could refuse with my collar bone.

It was during the middle of this that Stephen invited me to join him and Randy on a trip to Chicago to see the King Tut Exhibit. It was going to be quite a trip because they didn't have much money between them. They were paying for the hotel room with some coupons Randy got. With nothing else to do, I went. It was mostly a good time.

It's time for me to do something spontaneous like that again. After my Duluth trip I just don't have the energy right now. Besides, I'm really not sure where to go. That's all right when one is twenty. Past fifty one is supposed to know.

ADD-ON: The SpyBot software (STOPzilla) has successfully attacked and destroyed the big CPU hog on this computer. Speed has returned to pre-January rates. Huzzah!