I thought about jumping from the loft on our second floor onto the couch. Thought about hanging off of the edge and just letting myself drop to the floor.
Not because I want to hurt myself but because I am curious if I can still do it. I have jumped out of trees, off of roofs and from my bike more than once.
Hurled myself out of the back of a slow moving pick up many years ago because I figured if a stuntman could do it so could I.
Maybe we ought to be surprised I have had relatively few injuries. Chipped the talus on my right ankle playing basketball when I was 20 and broke my nose at least three times, but that is mostly it.
Sure, there have been some dislocated fingers and a couple of hernias, but the last dislocated finger and the two hernias happened during my late forties.
Does it mean I spent too much time around kryptonite during the past dozen years or has age started to catch up.
Hell, I am not entirely certain because there are moments where the kids at the gym say I have old man strength and I laugh because I am not old.
I laugh because it feels like I am 20 and there are moments where it is a struggle and I can’t figure out why.
But if you call my work phone at midnight or beyond and I answer you might get a colorful response that 20 year-old me could only have dreamed of giving.
Put Your Hand In Mine & See What Happens
There were decades in which I tested my strength against my father both mentally and physically.
We used to do this thing where we would shake hands and see who had the superior grip. It infuriated me to lose time and time again because for years I could not win.
Sometimes I would wait until mom had left to challenge him because I knew he would go harder without her in the room.
He never tried to hurt me but I pushed hard to best him. I figured if I couldn’t out squeeze I might be able to outlast him and I would try to goad him into squeezing harder.
These were days of playing games at school and with friends we called mercy and or hot hands. Days when playing sports meant you never cried on the field ever…you shook it off.
Some people refer to some of what happened during our childhood as toxic masculinity and maybe some of it was.
There were some nasty aspects, but there were positives too. You learned to deal with physical discomfort. You learned to look for solutions under fire and during peace time.
You learned how to take a punch and how to throw one.
But this isn’t really about whether it was a good or bad way to be raised. If you asked me it was fine, I am Gen-X and we are the survivors.
The amount of unsupervised time we had growing up was enormous and I’d guess huge numbers of us did things that we never want our own children to do. We really are lucky.
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Some years back I put out my hand told someone to take it. “Put your hand in mine and see what happens but understand if you do nothing will ever be the same. Lightning strikes and you dance in the fire.”
****
Sometimes I tease the younger Mr. Wilner about not having gotten his full share of ‘Wilner strength’ yet though that happens less often.
We rarely wrestle now and generally he doesn’t need me to help him open jars or cans of anything.
I am glad that he can do it for himself but every now and then I miss him testing his strength against mine.
I enjoyed it as much as a father as I did as a son but there are some differences. I kept hoping he would get to the place where I would want to quit because I knew he might beat me.
It happened with running. He never really beat me in a sprint, but I couldn’t possibly win a race of any real distance. That kid loved to run and for a while was on the cross country team.
Loved it when he started to beat me at Chess and I had to play a more serious game.
I don’t like losing to anyone, that is the honest truth. But I kind of appreciate losing to the kids, especially when they do it in a way that I couldn’t see coming.
That is what really makes me smile, seeing their brain work in ways that just astound me. So even though I may not like losing I still feel like I won.
