BURGER SCOOT

One morning, about two months ago, I walked out to my driveway to try to find the newspaper. I couldn’t see it from my kitchen window and my live-at-home adult son didn’t leave it on the front porch or opened it on the kitchen table and (much to my consternation) failed to fold it back up before leaving for work. I think it was a couple of years ago The Sacramento Bee announced their delivery service would no longer be placing the paper near subscribers’ front door, but on the subscribers’ driveway. (And please spare me the, “You should get the e-edition and save a tree” line. I got the e-edition, too, and I hate it.) The new “driveway delivery” wasn’t much of an inconvenience until this morning when the paper was thrown under our SUV–right in the middle–like the guy was trying to make the paper land in the most inaccessible spot on the driveway. 

I got down on my chest, thinking about if this toss was the deliverer’s passive-aggressive way of saying, “You don’t tip me enough, asshole,” shimmied as close to the car as possible and extended my right arm–stretching it as far as it would go. Not only did my short arm and my stubby fingers not even graze the paper, but a searing pain shot through my upper arm and shoulder. I recoiled my arm and rolled over on my back, pulling the right arm into my chest, but the pain did not subside until about thirty seconds later. I was waiting for the ultimate humiliation: someone walking their dog would see me holding my hand over my heart and run to me while dialing 911. Thankfully, that didn’t happen so I was spared the EMT truck followed by the completely unnecessary fire engine visit. I also was spared the $350 charge for nothing. 

When the pain finally subsided, I rolled my fat body over to my belly and did what would probably be the only partial pushup I could do. Then, I slowly got to my knees, then with the support of the quarter-ton Nissan Pathfinder as support rose to my feet. After fetching a broom and angrily swiping the paper into the gutter where I finally picked it up, I walked inside the house and made coffee all the while considering what just happened.

You see, the pain I experienced laying on my driveway partly under one of my vehicles was not new–not completely. I have been having some discomfort sleeping on either side of my body, and getting up in the morning reminded me of the winter mornings in the late-70s. The stark difference was that muscle soreness had to do with trying and not learning how to ski. In my mid-60s the pain seemed more to do with doing nothing, sitting on my fat ass, reading, browsing through way too many streaming services looking for something to entertain me. At any rate, I did no exercises the day before other than lug this fat body around the house. This was not sustainable. I emailed my doctor asking her to refer me to a physical therapist. 

I had been to this physical therapy clinic before. Back in early 2014 I was diagnosed with degenerative disk disease and assigned a physical therapist (PT) who I thought at the time had saved my life. Pauline and I recognized each other as members of the same fitness club, and she recommended a yoga class for me that–for nearly ten years changed my life. 

(I won’t hyperlink any earlier posts having to do with yoga, but from the mid-twenty-teens up to about the COVID-19 years this blog was chiefly a yoga blog.) 

I had asked for Pauline to be my PT but found out she had retired. I was assigned to Tyrone, a black man who looked in his late thirties or early forties with an encouraging personality. I really liked Tyrone or Ty partly because I was originally assigned to Mary a very attractive Asian-American woman in her thirties who seemed like she either had a lot on her mind or didn’t like me for some reason (or maybe her flavor of professionalism comes off a little chilly). I admit being nervous around pretty women; I am always worried they think I am checking them out. Sometimes they are looking at my lazy left eye or they notice am not making eye contact, but looking down. I was afraid Mary asked Ty to take her patient because I gave her the creeps, but that was never verified for obvious reasons. 

Par for the course, I didn’t do my stretches as often as my PT instructed. What I did find both in my sessions with my PT and when I did my homework that my range of motion absolutely sucked. Lying on a foam roller on my back, one of my stretches was to do something similar to a backstroke. I noticed when my left arm was extended over my head my hand could not touch the floor; the hand would hang high in the air– probably six inches from the floor. When I switched to my right arm my longest finger grazing the floor. This was alarming and when I asked Ty about this, he whipped out the same gadget he used the first time he examined my arms, shoulders, and back. It’s called a goniometer, and it measures the range of motion of my arms. Wow, both were limited, but my left shoulder/arm was more limited in range than my right. It’s funny in a sad way but seeing my limited range of motion still didn’t improve the frequency of my homework. Well, maybe a little.  

I continued in an inconsistent manner to stretch. While this was happening, I was having problems with my health insurance. Not my own insurance, but my wife’s, which is the insurance I use. This is a long, convoluted, ugly, frustrating story that I really don’t want to write about here. I will say that I have been using my wife’s health insurance (and she uses mine) for years, decades but things went south when I turned 65 and got my Medicare card. Suddenly, I had to spend hours on the phone explaining myself and to keep my wife’s (superior) insurance I was forced to apply for and receive a Medicare Advantage card. I felt like I was in 1930s Germany and was forced to join the Nazi Party. The only positive thing in this otherwise debacle is I now could get free gym memberships–which I think is the only thing that makes Medicare Advantage an advantage. (It should be called “Disadvantage.”)

I used this otherwise unfortunate turn of events to go back to Yoga Six–which I wrote in a post back in November of last year that I was going to stick with that–and sign back up, but this time for free. I believe I concluded in that post that I was going to stick with two classes and maybe dip my toes in a more advanced class later. This time I hope to just stick with only the restoration yoga class–Y6 Restore. It dovetails with my evening stretches my PT has me doing. 

Since I started seeing a physical therapist, I have a horrible batting average when it comes to stretching every night. My first month back at Yoga Six attending restorative yoga classes has not been consistent, but at least I have some legitimate excuses this time around: family and a few other events that took priority over yoga practice including physical therapy appointments and a Giants v Cubs game. (Go Cubs. Boy, that felt weird typing.) Hopefully, I’ll get back on the yoga horse soon. Even without consistently stretching or practicing yoga I can tell I am feeling much better, but I can’t take this current unearned feeling as an excuse not to work my body. I don’t know when I’ll have to go fishing for the paper under my car, again. Maybe I’ll increase the deliverer’s tip. Or a better incentive is a corn hole board on my driveway with a newspaper message on it like, ”