Geezer-Gait
(Before I was a crab I was a geezer)
Lethargy's Lament:
How straight the gait, how long the stride
sit and gripe, I do confide
Six miles a day--and more--ALAS!
With any luck--this TOO shall pass.
Since her thyroid got fixed (fool gland was out to lunch in a big way), Geezer-Girl here has gotten back her legs. Thanks to a daily dose of synthroid (standard medicine for lazy thyroids), she's back in stride, kicking ass in seamless sync with the rest of the moving particles we call the world. These days she moves those two God-given limbs of locomotion attached to her T-shirted torso and virtually tangos her way down the boulevard of broken tendons past countless guarded/gated communities as the doves commence their "coo" mantra and the moon hits the sack.
She's out there before the streetlights defer to the haze and heat of the coming Florida day; before the parade of joggers, walkers, roller-bladers, and bikers descend from their condo-caves to offer themselves up. Unlike most of the moving bodies seen as blurs on the street, Geezer wears a pedometer at her waist; she likes to see those son of a bitch tenths of a mile rack up. Our Lone Strider is currently up to six and 8 tenths of a mile in an hour and 15 minutes and is arriving at her back door with plenty of reserve and the same amount of relief to be closer to that first cup of coffee.
A while back, a pontificating doctor told Geezer-Girl to cut out the coffee. "Fuck you," thought she. Another one lectured about the virtues of structured exercise and she pondered that as she sat on her ass. The horrors of fat intake were immaculately integrated into the culture; she felt alone in her habits, this uncool and rebellious relic from the salt pork and beans generation. Geezer felt loyal to her toxins, but even she knew that it was but a matter of time. Sooner or later, the emperor would have clothes.
She started to perceive them gradually, and when she broke down and got a good pair of bifocals, she even commenced reading labels of the things she was considering to consume. Maybe, she mused, just maybe, there IS something to all this healthy living crap. Geezer's faith in the supremacy of genetics began to wobble. Sure, her parents were still alive in their 9th decades in spite of the steak fat and heavy cream choices that characterized the majority of their years. So? Who knows why Geezer finally jumped on the bandwagon.
Might have had some sort of epiphany or maybe it was the minor surgery, but one thing is for sure, she joined up in a big way. She can now even be seen from time to time in a health food store. Nothing so zealous as a convert they say. We'll say one thing for her though, Geezer has undergone this change in a manner consistent with her character. She has managed to construe her personal capitulation to the reigning Zeitgeist to be a Zen thing. In other words, she's not just out there walking her ass off like everyone else out there walking their ass off; no, she's communing and meditating and becoming one with the pavement.
There is, however, a plan B; Geezer got one of those head set radios as a backup just in case the Zen fizzles like the water thing did. (Geezer's adventures with body-defining are described in another article in this issue entitled,"Water-Water Everywhere.") That way she can switch from the purposeful mystic void to the purposefully mundane and vulgar Howard Stern. If that doesn't do it she can always tap into Imus. Point is, it doesn't matter.
Ultimately she can always just laughingly reflect on the fact that after all her years of work and learning and living, she has entered her 6th decade with the knowledge that retirement has not left her bereft of identity and deep sources of satisfaction. This rough and tumble T-shirted Mamma has become a streetwalker!
