Running With Carts
Everything appears to become more difficult as we age. Heck! Everything is more difficult as we lose our edge, our teeth, our faculties. It’s kind of handy that around the time we can no longer see cobwebs in the corners, we lose interest in keeping our homes immaculate. No matter how many adjustments I get to my glasses, I can still see better up close without them. Unfortunately I can no longer get down on my knees to discover just how much dirt has accumulated along the edge of the floor. Who cares?
While cleanliness may be something we can let slide, our physical condition is not. Here is where we’re hampered by diminishing capacities for performing physical feats. Strength wanes along with the eyesight. We get winded sooner. Knees hurt. Falls are more dangerous, something I discovered a few years ago. While out for my daily constitutional (a walk around my neighborhood on concrete pavements), a slightly lowered foot collided with a slightly raised sidewalk edge. The resulting broken rib put me out of commission for quite a few weeks. That’s not so bad if there’s a spouse or child to help out, but I was alone in my distress.
I’d already had a broken metatarsal in my right foot a few years earlier, and I seem to take spills with annoying regularity. Sure thing, a bone density scan revealed incipient osteoporosis. O.K., so I take a bone strengthener and calcium tablets now, but what about getting the needed weight-bearing exercise, and exercise in general? The recommended preventative or assist for the most common ailments is–you know it–exercise. For a “senior” without extra income for such niceties, a gym membership is out. Walking is about the only reasonable alternative. I also needed to lose about 50 pounds, incidentally. Extra weight is the only thing we gain with age!
I was pondering this impass early one morning as I exited the supermarket, wheeling my goodies down a nearly empty parking lot toward my car. I’d parked farther away from the entrance to force myself to walk more on the smooth tarmac. I had a firm grip on the shopping cart handle–didn’t want that little sucker to run away from me and probably dent one of the few cars in the lot. How nice it would be, I thought, to have something like that to hold onto while I did my daily mile of walking. How nice to have the smooth lot, rather than the humpy sidewalk. I remembered my Aunt Margie doing the “mall walks” with other seniors back in the midwest. Warm in winter, cool in summer. A safe place to walk.
Then it struck me: the sudden urge to run back to my car. I realized I could maintain my balance better by holding onto the cart. “That’s it!” I thought. In California we don’t have the nice covered malls to walk around in, but we have nice weather and grocery store lots and carts to use. Eureka! So if you’re around the Murphy Canyon Vons early in the day, and you see a fat old lady running (well, walking fast) across the parking lot, pushing an empty shopping basket–that’ll be me, getting my exercise by running with carts.
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