Now that I’m a few ticks past the half century mark, those words seem more apropos with each passing day. Despite trying to eat reasonably well, keep my weight in-check, my heart rate strong, my blood pressure low, and my cholesterol even, it would appear that the wheels are starting to fall off my chassis.

5 months ago I was diagnosed with degenerative discs in my upper and lower spine. And with the nervous system of what William Borroughs coined “the soft machine” all wired through that circuit box, I’m having bouts of pain (both sharp and dull), the tingles, and numbness in many extremities. Sleep can sometimes be strained. And finding comfort in nearly any position can prove difficult.

Recently, as I pondered my sorry state, it dawned on me that it’s really no wonder that the parts to this “rusty old American dream”—as David Wilcox metaphorically named it—are beginning to wear out. For decades I’ve lived by the credo “use it or lose it.” And while I still agree with it in spirit, I’m wondering if practice is another matter.

For instance: My 6’4” frame was never intended to squeeze into ever smaller airline seats and their restrictive “leg room.” That 16 ½” width doesn’t work so well for someone with a 22” shoulder span. And I’m surprised that my knee caps don’t have permanent scar tissue from being rammed by the reclining seat of a usually unsympathetic occupant in front of me. I’m now past the 1,600 count of flights in my lifetime, the majority of which have been in the last 25 years. Close to 100 have been the 8 to 14 hour transoceanic variety, and only twice have I been fortunate enough to sit in the balmy climes of First Class as I have passed through all 24 time zones. I always while away the hours with a good book, or writing, or watching the in-flight cinema fare. And I’m even blessed with the ability to snooze on a plane. But those four thousand or so hours contorted like Houdini while circling the globe to the tune of 40 revolutions have taken their toll.

Then I consider my workout regimen. I’ve been pretty regular about it for 29 years now, with close to 3,000 concerted forays into physical exertion at various YMCA’s, health clubs, and gyms around the world. There has been many an evening where I wonder why I put myself through this as I stare up and a water-stained acoustical tile and a spastic fluorescent bulb while flat on my back between sit-ups or bench-presses. By my estimate over these 3 decades I have pushed 15.6 million pounds on the bench, curled 11.5 million more, lifted my own body weight 110,000 times via push-ups, squeezed my stomach muscles over 450,000 times, and spent 1,150 hours on either a stationary bike or elliptical machine—the equivalent of 48 straight days. Who knows how many additional metric tons I’ve moved via lat pull downs, tricep dips, leg lifts, squats, quad push-outs, French curls, incline presses, shoulder lifts, leg squeezes, glute pinches, forearm flies, knee bends, and leg extension presses. How many hundreds of miles from jogging, power walking, and aerobic repetitions that caused intense shin-splints?

Of course over 20,000 lifts of a 50 pound suitcase in my travels, and over 4,000 hours of lugging around a stout 20 pound briefcase/computer bag have done wonders for my shoulders, too.

Sports have taken their toll as well, I’m sure. In my day, one of the few things I truly excelled at was throwing a ball for speed and distance. A couple of former pro ballplayers told me my arm was “major league.” A quarter of a century of baseball/softball produced at least 300,000 throws, many of them approaching 95 mph, or covering 300 feet. I have a torn right rotator cuff as a result. I’ve probably swung a bat at least 100,000 times vs. live pitching, machines, fungoes, or even hitting rocks to perfect my stroke. At least a dozen times I’ve had dislocated fingers from bad hop grounders. I’ve taken some wicked bounces of baseballs off my shins, ankles, wrists, chest, shoulders, and yes, took a 200 foot throw right square in the nads once that had me laid-out for the better part of a day. My gills still turn green thinking about that one. I also took several on my noggin. I recall once having the distinct baseball stitching pattern bruised into my forehead for 10 days after one such beaning. 

I’ve jumped 150,000 times playing upwards of a thousand hours of basketball, with numerous messed up tendons in ankles due to twists and sprains, and a chipped tooth from an errant elbow. Though never scholastically, I played hundreds of hours of pick-up football without pads and rarely with cleats. This led to 4 bouts with water-on-the-knee from hyper-extensions bending that pivot point backwards (it ‘tweren’t pretty), and various other contusions and nasty bruises. Since I was a lousy skater, I would volunteer to play goalie in ice hockey, and took way too many pucks to the body, and a few to my face (which explains a lot). In floor hockey I fell on my right elbow and have bone chips floating around as a result, and had my chin lacerated from someone else’s follow-through on a slap shot that ended up requiring 23 stitches. In another game I broke my left big toe…a decade later the accompanying nail is still discolored from that crushing.

Other sports like track and field, volleyball, bowling, hiking, kickball, snorkeling, swimming, soccer, tetherball, rope courses, tennis, racquetball, badminton, ultimate Frisbee, and handball had their share in the decomposition to my condition.

Then there’s crazy self-inflicted stuff like being thrown from bicycles; falling off a 50 foot cliff at age 3; catapulting off some steps and busting my head open on a Tonka Toy dump truck at age 4 requiring stitches to the forehead; tumbling headlong down a 100 foot gravel path at age 6; piggy-back fights, tree climbing (and falling), rasslin’, rappelling, cliff climbing, and vicious games of Red Rover, Duck Hunter, Dodge Ball, Stunt Man, Crack-the-Whip, Smear the Queer, and Death Match Twister. Being a crazed hockey fan even had its drawbacks in that I carried a large portfolio bag full of cardboard signs, handouts, noisemakers, clipboards, etc. for our silly Cellblock 303 shenanigans at Nashville Predators’ games. The 16 block hike from my parking space to the arena and back over 10 seasons amounted to traversing 6,400 blocks with that 35 pound case slung over my shoulder.

And plain old domestic chores have added to the wear and tear. What tonnage of snow have I shoveled in those 30 years living in the artic blasts of the Midwest? Cutting close to 1,000 lawns have covered how many acres of back and forth with burdensome equipment propelled with my own legs and back? How many thousands of pounds of clippings and leaves have I raked, bagged and dragged? Before powered edge trimmers, how many back breaking hours were spent gripping those blasted grass trimmers making the driveways and sidewalks look snazzy? 

Moving, whether myself, or family, or friends has probably occurred at least 30 times. In my own case, the 6,000 record albums I once had were idiotic enough to keep transporting. But then there were numerous times of taking sectional sofas up (or down) 4 flights of stairs, lifting pianos, and heaving under the weight of freezers, console stereos, filing cabinets, washers, office desks, and overstuffed lazy-boy chairs. 

Of course, there have been jobs that entailed repetitious movements that may have added to my current plight. Detassling corn, bailing hay, shoveling dung, cleaning chicken coops, and pumping wells took untold hours of exertion on various farms up through my teens. Lifting and flipping scalding hot 32 pound kettles of caramel corn hundreds of times at a popcorn shop took up five afternoons a week during three of my high school years. Mopping floors, cleaning toilets, scrubbing showers, and dumping gorged garbage bins filled many nights as I worked my way through college with Service Master and Wheaton’s Building and Grounds Crew. 

Several more years in construction where I shuffled thousands of wheelbarrows of wet cement, gravel, and bricks, as well as carrying 50 pound bags of shingles up ladders to roofs, along with hoisting drywall and cinder blocks most likely added to the decay. Not to mention stripping floors, laying carpet, tile and linoleum, spreading tar, laying myriad brick, hammering ten thousand nails, digging ditches, removing stumps, laying sod, tree trimming, shoveling sand for hours on end, pulling logs, and painting indoors and out. There were 1,000+ hours as a shipping clerk at a CB radio factory where I daily packed and moved skid loads of product in 40 to 100 pound boxes. I’m guessing now that most of these could not have been helpful for my back.

Even the music business can be detrimental to spinal health (as well as many other physical, mental, and even spiritual disciplines). I was never a professional drummer, but thousands of hours pounding away on the skins as an amateur creates a certain level of nerve-wracking push back to the central core. And then helping with load-in/load-out at hundreds of concerts lifting cases, racks, amps, speaker cabinets, cable boxes, taping down cords, and the never ending up and down from trucks and loading docks and crawling in and out of bus bays is lamentable. Trying to sleep for weeks at a time in tour bus bunks that were 4 inches shorter than me and only 30 inches wide and high must’ve added to the woe.

Now don’t get me wrong…I look back fondly on all these experiences. Even the painful ones bring a bit of a smile. And I am extremely grateful that our bodies are built to take such a pounding…indeed that we often grow stronger, more durable, and even resilient from repeated calisthenics that build muscle tone, and trials that engender character. As the psalmist said, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. But in Ecclesiastes it also says that for every thing under heaven there is a season…turn, turn, turn. I can’t help but think that all this mileage has finally caught up with me. 

The price gets paid in the silliest ways now: a simple turn in the shower that I have done 15,000 times in my life can now send my back into spasms. Or picking up a sack of groceries, or pulling Dad’s 13 pound walker out of the back seat of my car, or even bending over to pick up branches in my yard can set 10 days of intense mayhem into motion. It’s getting harder and harder to predict when and how the bouts will occur.

I’m doing all I can to combat the regression via stretching, posture, diet, and even some pain medications when needed. I’m still attempting workouts, but the challenge is finding just the right weights and blends of movement that don’t exacerbate the situation further. I truly want to avoid going under the knife, as I have heard too many horror stories, and too few successes for me to think it would turn out differently in my case. And the advice from so many well-meaning friends has been abundant…and often quite contradictory (or at least confusing).

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when queried about how he was going to head off another daunting scenario, Indiana Jones mumbled “…I don’t know…I’m just making this up as I go along.” Never were more honest words spoken, and my back echoes that refrain.