Men of a certain age share many traits. One of these is the belief that we can still play sports and participate in physical activities the same way we could when we were a little shorter in the tooth and longer in stride.
We have a terrific, albeit misplaced, sense of confidence in our physical prowess. Some call this affliction “weekend warrior syndrome,” but my spouse says this is a somewhat inaccurate descriptor for me since I manage to injure myself on a regular basis – not just on weekends – and this causes her worry. So I’ve come up with a new tag: the “weakened worrier.”
Since hitting 40 (at full speed, with no extra padding, protection or helmet), an age considered ancient for most professional sports players, I have managed to accumulate a list of injuries that would make a pharmaceutical sales rep salivate. It’s not like I’m into bungee-jump stick-fighting or anything otherwise extreme. I’m just trying to get some exercise and have fun. Then I get injured. Every time.
The latest of my many knee injuries was suffered about a year ago while overseas in Afghanistan training police officers. I wish I had a more manly story, but I hurt my knee playing squash. The Catch-22 was summed up nicely by a French doctor on duty in the military hospital after he examined my knee and X-rays. He came to the conclusion that playing squash in my overweight condition caused too much stress on the cartilage in my knee. “You are fat. You need to do exercise. You must lose weight,” he said. I began protesting that I had in fact been exercising, but it was no use.
My next-to-last injury was also from playing squash, except this time my rather inexperienced partner decided the term squash was a verb, not a sport. In keeping with tradition, this injury was received during my first game back after my previous squash injury last year. In a laudable effort, my opponent drove his shoulder into my ribcage while trying valiantly to close the distance with the ball.
I could feel my left lung collapse and it was a few minutes before I was vertical and breathing again from both airbags. I drove myself to the hospital, where the X-rays and doctors informed me, almost to my disappointment, that my injury consisted merely of the smirk-inducing condition known to all over-40s as soft tissue injury. Thankfully, my wife was out of town for a few days so I could whine at will to the dog.
The pulled groin I received a couple of years ago during my second ice hockey game in about 28 years drew even less sympathy. However, I call no fair on that front because women can never fully understand what it’s like to be injured in that area.
My worst mishap on the ego scale arrived during an afternoon of tobogganing. It actually had nothing to do with a toboggan because of the massive amount of snow that had buried the tow lifts on the mountain that day. So instead, we did what most athletes of our calibre would do in this situation: We went to the pub.
The damage occurred in the parking lot of said saloon. Having no place to change, I secreted myself between a couple of parked cars and tried to take off my long underwear. I sprained my thumb while hurriedly trying to strip one long john leg and sock off my foot while hopping up and down on the other foot. I still think it qualifies as a sports injury.
