Growing Old…
What the hell is that thing growing out of my armpit?

When I was "in my prime," between the ages of 18 and 22, I was a complete stud-jock in every descriptive way imaginable. I played football and baseball in college, and then added softball and rugby as the years progressed. In college, I was just over 200 pounds, could run the 40-yard dash in just over 4.6 seconds, could bench press close to 300 pounds, and had the kind of boundless energy that comes from playing sports and working out 2-4 hours a day.

With 28" thighs and a large upper body, I could leg press over 1,000 pounds and simply applied "brute force" over common sense in almost every application of life and pleasure. I did not like to wear a mouthpiece when playing sports, and my short (5'10") body was so compact and durable, that I was fortunate enough not to suffer any real long-term injury, no matter what degree of reckless abandoned I applied to any activity, both on and off the field. I suffered several breaks of my nose, broken fingers, broken teeth, a slight nerve tear to my shoulder, and a slight ligament tear to a knee, but nothing compared to the career-ending injuries that many athletes experienced before the days of the super-sports-surgeons.

I had 20-15 eyesight that allowed me to hit almost anything with accuracy, incredible reaction time, and amazing balance (low center of gravity).

I played hard. I drank beer like a competitive sport (and in Rugby, it is almost part of the game) and for the most part, ate anything I wanted.

Over the course of the next 20 years, I continued to be active in sports, adding racquetball to my list of favorite activities, and continued to remain as active as a life as a husband, father of five, and entrepreneur would allow.

Then, on my 45th birthday (I swear it was actually on my birthday) I suddenly realized that I couldn't read the comics section while relaxing with my morning constitutional, without laying the paper on the floor, four feet away from my eyes. The aging process was settling in…and it has been a rapid and steady downhill slide since then.

Now in my early 50s, I couldn't do a 4.6 second 40-yard-dash on a bike. After suffering a back injury a year ago (from playing too many racquetball games in a two-day period, and then pushing our Chevy Astro van out of our driveway by myself because I didn't want to go back into the house and find the keys, and I took pride in being able to do it with my still strong, tree-trunk legs), I have realized that my body is trying to kill me.

I went to a chiropractor for the first time in my life. He showed me an x-ray of my spine. The first thing he said was, "how long did you play football, and what other contact sports have you played?" Seems that after years of running into things at full speed, my back was suffering from abuse and gravity, and was going to let me know that I was a dumbass for thinking that I was impervious to all of the warnings that I was given over the years about the long-term repercussions of constant collision with moveable and immovable objects and life-forces.

For the past year, I must start every day with stretching exercises, or know that the entire day will be met with a searing pain in my upper-ass region that feels like someone pinching my spine with hot pliers.

In 1996, after experiencing an NDE, I was finally diagnosed with severe congenital sleep apnea, and must use a machine that forces air into my breathing passage at night as I sleep. Luckily for me, my wife sees the tradeoff of being able to sleep without the sounds of my snoring (which had been measured at the same decibel level as Tractor-Pull Truck Rally) for the quiet, gentle ocean breeze sound of the CPAP machine as a positive thing. She also has come to see the Darth Vader look as being "sexy." It's a compromise…I get to live for a few more decades (hopefully) and she has to live with the bionic man when she it's time to hit the sheets (I don't wear it during sex…even if she asks me to).

Compromise…that is the word that seems to creep deeper and deeper into my everyday life.

If I want to live longer, after years of abusing my body, I have to compromise. I don't push vehicles by myself anymore. I don't play contact sports. I only play racquetball a couple of times a week, and avoid the tournaments. I play with guys my own age and skill level, and don't dive for the ball anymore. I drink infrequently, and almost never to excess. I eat better foods, avoiding the things that will make me feel awful, even if they taste good (the combination of spicy food and dairy is guaranteed to create and almost instant and violent flushing of my system). I don't smoke. I don't pull all-nighters. I don't do drugs, and for the most part avoid all types of pills, unless the pain is unbearable.

Compromise.However, I also know the difference between doing everything in my power to extend my life, and compromising the QUALITY of life.

I live in a town that is supposed to be one of the healthiest towns in the country. Eugene is the birthplace of Nike, Bill Bowerman's book on jogging, and home to one of the biggest networks of bike trails of any town its size. Eugene is loaded with health food stores, rivaled only by the number of drive-through coffee kiosks.

On any given morning, you can see hundreds (on some days thousands) of people out jogging, walking and bike riding, all with the same "I am in complete pain, but this is good for me" looks on their faces.

I like riding bikes. I own a low-priced mountain/road bike with all sorts of bells and whistles. I ride it about twice a month…when it is not raining…by myself…and without any sort of biking clothing or paraphernalia other than a helmet. I have seen how stupid people my age look in bike clothes. I don't want to wear anything that makes me look sillier than I already do, constricts my "package" or make me look French.

I detest running just for the sake of running. Even when I could run a five-minute mile, I hated running. Unless I am chasing a ball, trying to reach base before the tag, or chasing somebody that I get to tackle, I don't like to run. Ironically, there was a day when I would run for hours playing Frisbee, pick-up games of football and rugby, and not care one whit. But, if you told me that I had to run around a track for more than a lap or two, I would be filled with the same sense of dread that a Border collie must feel on a leash.

Marathon runners are from a different planet. I suspect they have different politics and different religions than I do. I admire someone with the determination to run a marathon, but am never surprised when they require hip and knee replacement surgery several times in their adult lives. There is a reason that the guy who ran the first marathon died after delivering his message of the Athenian victory over the Persians. We are not supposed to run that far. I'm sure that even one or two of the most grateful of Athenians said, "what the hell was that guy thinking? What a dumbass!"

I am also not a fan of aerobic exercise machines. My daughter has a hamster. It runs on the wheel for hours. I see the people on the second floor of the racquetball club to which I belong, running, rowing, biking and "ellipting" for hours…not getting anywhere. I never know whether to congratulate them for their efforts, or throw them a handful of sunflower seeds and banana chips.

But no matter how much you work, no matter what lengths you go to live longer, in the end your body is going to start doing things that remind yourself that your ride on this plane of human experience is finite.

Tons of people my age have already suffered heart attacks, or had to battle the various cancers that become more and more prevalent as we grow older. You can run your ass off in the latest running gear from Nike, with all of the right training table guides and sleep regimens to back you up, and you still can't beat genetics. For most of us, the second you are conceived, the little zeros and ones that are the helix on and off switches of our genetic makeup are thrown, and our futures are cast to some degree.

You can sure as hell make things worse by smoking, eating and drinking too much, or doing almost anything without moderation (there's a word to live by), but in the end, most scientific researchers are having to acknowledge that genetics have more to do with how long we live than almost anything else. You can't pick your parents, or the crazy-ass uncle who went mad, practicing the violin compulsively in the attic, but you can do your best to not give your body an easy tripping point to start opening your body to disease.

If dying, (did I mention my NDE?) taught me anything, it is that life in general is nothing but a wonderful, complex/simple mirage of pseudo reality, that when finally analyzed has little to do with the length of the ride, but the QUALITY of the ride.

It is for this reason that I am not shocked to hear that Asian scientists are finding out that laughter has tons of healing properties that actually not only fight the onset of diseases like Diabetes, but can also help the healing process when we are hit with an illness. As it turns out, attitude, especially a positive "half glass full" way of looking at things, especially our challenges, often make the difference between living longer, happier lives, free of serious disease, and mental illness. So in the end, laugh at aging and the strange side effects it brings on.

It would appear that even in the best definition, our bodies are nothing more than a basic set of support systems (kind of like calcium Tinker Toys) surrounded by an ever-evolving tub of goo. The goo is fed by a fairly simple system of air, water and solids that all have necessary and evil chemicals that sustain or debilitate (depending on your choices) but in the end, may be most effected by the chemicals created by our minds that control how we "feel."

Wanna feel crappy? Become reliant upon depressive substances…or just have a negative attitude about everything and your body will create the kind of chemicals that will not only keep you feeling depressed, but will open the door to disease and sickness as the immune system is broken down.

Want to feel great about getting old? Then laugh at it. When you notice some new, strange skin flap growing under your arm pit, inner thigh, or any other place these things seem to crop up…laugh at how weird your body can be in old age (then tie a thread around it, choking the very life from it…wait a few days and laugh again when it drops off).

When you realize that you need several different strengths of reading glasses to read, watch television, work on model railroad parts, read the "input/output" lettering on the back of the VCR, or work on the computer, don't get angry. Go to the "Dollar Store" and get ten different pairs, even some of those cool folding one for trips, and then put them all over your house. Don't worry if they don't look like designer frames, nobody is going to take your picture while you change the cables on the VCR. And don't sweat it if you lose a pair or three or six…they cost less than a liter of Diet Pepsi.

When you realize that wearing the size of dress pants that has always fit before, now leave a swollen, vicious ring of puckered flesh around your waste, don't hesitate to get a few pairs of the "Perfect Fit" pants that look like the regular khaki dress pants, but have hidden elastic expanders in the waist. They look great…and are comfortable as hell when you are sitting through your niece's three-hour graduation ceremony. They even make them in real dress slack material with cuffs.

Wear comfortable shoes. I can't stress this enough. There are tons of shoes that are wide, dressy, and have soft soles. I have a favorite pair of traditional looking wing-tops, with a soft, bouncy comfort sole. The longer you are going to sit somewhere…a car, a plane, a movie, Easter services…the more you will appreciate comfortable shoes and an expandable waistband.

Unless you are at a funeral, wedding, or testifying in front of congress, stop wearing ties. I have always hated them. I think I gravitated toward being in the entertainment industry so I wouldn't have to wear a tie every day. We creative types are not expected to dress the same as the rest of the world. Every day is "business casual" to us. I work in an office that almost nobody every visits, as our clients are almost all hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. As I write this, I am wearing shorts, a polo shirt, and flip-flops. Nobody is the wiser. I am very relaxed, comfortable, and do not need a tie to make my point.

What the hell is with ties anyway? They seem like some old vestige of fraternal lodges or other secret organizations. Who needs some piece of symbolic color, designed to point to the most important part of the man wearing it? It's like an arrow that says, "Look…I have a penis!" Ridiculous.

If you must go to a doctor, find one who will listen to you, remembers your name and doesn't prescribe a bunch of pills for every ailment. As I said before, we are just a big tub of goo and chemistry. Once you start taking pills for something on a regular basis, you are likely to offset the balance, and have to start taking pills to offset the side-effects of the pills you started taking. Take a look in the medicine cabinets of the most people over 70 years old. They are FULL of prescription bottles. I have witnessed almost as many old people die from overmedication in hospitals as I have from actual disease and injury.

Almost 90,000 people a year die from infections they RECEIVED from staying in a hospital, mostly due to lax practices in cleaning the instruments and bedding used in hospital rooms. The numbers are even higher in nursing facilities. If you want to increase your chances of living longer, stay out of hospitals…and if you have to go, make sure the staff wash their hands and don't overmedicate you.

Finally, if you want to cheat aging, keep having sex. I realize that as we get older, we are supposed to lose the desire, and some unfortunately through diseases like prostate cancer, lose the ability to perform. However, my motto in life, particularly when it comes to sex and your sexual apparatus is, "Use it or lose it!" There is all sorts of research that says that keeping your mind healthy requires you to exercise your mind by reading, writing, and doing mind puzzles on a regular basis. I contend that the same thing is true about sex (just substitute the mind puzzles with finding new ways to "keep it fresh" after 4,000 times with the same partner). As with most good things in life, it's not always reaching the goal, it's the getting there that is the fun part. However when it comes to sex, "getting there" has its own reward.

When you have an orgasm, your body releases endorphins and dopamine. The endorphins are natural painkillers that kick in when we are over the plateau in exercise (like a runner's high without the expensive runner's shoes). Dopamine gives you the giddy high that makes you want to laugh (not like laughing when an old person takes off their clothes) and gives you a general feeling of euphoria. It is the same addictive rush that heroin users experience. But, in this case, as long as I have a choice, I prefer to get a good "happy rush" and a cardiac high through the pleasures of sex…not running for hours or becoming addicted to drugs and the Grateful Dead.

In my book, the orgasm is God's reward for the rest of the garbage we have to endure in this life. It is healthy, it makes you happy, it is a natural stress reliever, and above all, it is FREE! There are no barriers of entry (once you learn to ignore the ridiculous morays of organized religion). In fact, St. Paul even extols regular sex as being a healthy way to resist temptation ( I am assuming he means the temptation of more sex…with your neighbor' wife).

So…in review…if you want to be happy and healthy in life, no matter how many curves life and aging throw at you, just follow Crabby's Rules for a Happy Life.

1. Laugh at getting old. Laughing is healthy. After all, even though it gets more difficult the older we get, aging sure as hell beats the alternative.

2. Don't play contact sports after the age of 40. Who the hell are you kidding anyway? After 40, almost everything you do can become a contact sport, from changing a light bulb to weeding the garden!

3. Don't go to a doctor unless it is absolutely necessary. Stay in hospitals as short a time as possible, and make sure the staff washed their hands!

4. Wear comfortable clothes, comfortable shoes, and don't wear ties.

5. Have as much sex as you can get away with without getting arrested. It is best with a partner, but by yourself is not bad either. Orgasms are healthy and as you are already losing your eyesight and hairy palms are a myth (not to be confused with ear hair, nose hair and Andy Rooney eyebrows) let 'er rip! Who cares about an apple a day? A few big "Os" a week is a hell of a lot more fun, and easier on your teeth.

6. Learn to compromise. Moderation in everything is not only wise, but probably the only way you are going to live past 60.

7. Smile, damnit. Laugh, smile, giggle, guffaw, sniggle and hoot. This "E-ticket ride" called life is supposed to be fun. Being serious in life won't help you live longer, it will just FEEL that way… So get over yourself. Have some fun. Who gives a rat's patoot what other people think?

Have a ball…this life only comes around once- and it's too late to turn back now. So, you might as well enjoy the ride.