My father would often say, "It's hell getting old." To someone in pretty much their physical prime, as I was at the time, those words didn't really have much meaning. I remember thinking that he should maybe work on staying in better shape. Smoke and drink less, exercise more. Now, from the vantage point of middle age, I've come to realize how true that simple phrase is. The hell is in the knowledge that you've passed some unseen point in life where you will never be completely healthy again. You don't know you've hit your peak until your body lets you know you are past it. The evidence accumulates slowly, but the realization has a suddenness and an air of finality about it. When I get up in the morning, my first few steps across the floor sound like my bedroom carpeting is made of bubble wrap. I have 5 places on my body which never stop hurting and only one of them is actually from an injury. The other four just kinda came on me gradually. Exercise has become less about getting or staying healthy and more about slowing the continuous erosion of aging. It makes me wonder if what I have in store is a maddeningly gradual descent into that withered old guy who launches into a long, boring recitation of all his aches and pains whenever you ask him how he's doing. I don't want to be that guy.