The revelation that I’ve got eight weeks of pain ahead of me has made me realise: we humans get out of practice when it comes to falling down
The older you get, the more dramatic it feels to fall over. I think this is less to do with creeping fragility than how out of practice adults are at it. When you are a kid, you fall over all the time and bounce straight back up like Wile E Coyote after he’s been flattened by a steamroller. When you take a tumble in middle age, your life flashes past you before you hit the ground, at which point you see stars and then, for an instant, keep perfectly still before you dare to explore what life-changing injuries you may have sustained.
In my 20s, I played a lot of football as a goalkeeper; I enjoyed throwing myself about. The last time I played, quite recently, I was delighted to find I could still get substantially airborne. I was less delighted to find that upon coming back to Earth I nigh-on passed out and needed half the team to help me back to my feet. Never mind pilates, yoga and whatnot, we should be able to go to falling-over sessions during which we’re pulled, pushed and tripped over willy-nilly until we get reaccustomed to falling over.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3yYj7jS
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