The Privilege Of 9/11

The email from the doctor’s office told me I had unfinished tasks that needed to be done in advance of my appointment tomorrow.

It wasn’t something I wanted to receive or think about because I took care of everything last week or so I thought. But I figured if it would save me time in the morning it wouldn’t hurt to double check.

Clicked on the link and the system began taking me through updating paperwork with the usual documents regarding consent to treatment, how they collect payment and a recounting of the medicines I take and existing health conditions.

I went through it all again and was irked to see a request for payment because I took care of that last week. The prompt refused to let me skip it and so it informed me I failed to meet my tasks.

The screen didn’t care when I flipped it the bird or so respond when I printed out proof of payment to bring with me tomorrow.

For a moment I walked around muttering curses about an appointment I don’t want to go to and time I don’t want to give up etc.

And then I remembered it is going to be 9/11 and thousands of families would like to have their loved ones here to curse the inconvenience and irritation.

What Are You Capable Of?

There is a new trainer at the gym who is trying to sign up new clients. He asked me last week if he could provide an introductory session and I asked two questions.

1) Have you worked with anyone over 50?

2) Do you care that I am not going to sign up for any training sessions any time soon?

The answer to the first was yes and the second was a thank you for being upfront.

“I don’t want to waste you time. I am interested, but tuition is eating up the cash that I would use for this. So it is unlikely to happen any time soon.”

He told me to try it out anyway and suggested I might have friends I could refer or that if I really liked it I might give up something else to find the cash.

I am hard upon those who try to sell me things but he had a soft manner and I appreciated his approach so I agreed to an hour.

It was a good session and I took two ibuprofen tonight cuz I think tomorrow may hurt a bit. But again I thought about those who haven’t got the choice or option and did it.

Thought about the irritation with tomorrow and how my father would have told me “it is a hard life all over. Not going to be any faster or easier if you whine, so just do it.”

Smiled because if I wasn’t writing about this no one would know it irks me. I learned the lesson, maybe even too well but here I am.

I have my complaints and some think they know what they are, but you rarely hear me complain about physical challenges.

At best you hear me discuss trying to make them better, but you typically don’t hear me tell you what aches or about any sort of physical ailment even if it is enough to be truly irritating.

Sometimes I think about it on a larger scale and how the boys/men of my generation were told to “walk or shake it off.”

If there wasn’t a bone sticking out of your body or massive amounts of blood you brushed yourself off and kept playing.

That is part of what came with the metal playgrounds of our childhood.

Steel slides that were hot enough to brand you, jungle gyms that you’d hang from and or jump off of even if you might eat metal on the way down or land on cement and more.

Hell, the merry-go-round was something you jumped on at a young age and hung from daring the big kids to spin it fast enough to fling you off of it.

We’re Not That Old But Older Than We Remember

The trainer was 30 and was in the navy for a while. I thanked him for his service and asked him where he was when the towers fell.

That was when I remembered I am not 30 anymore and haven’t been for years. That was when I remembered I was slightly older than this guy is now when the attacks hit.

He was a child, an elementary school kid.

His experience was very different than mine. He was old enough when the second Gulf war started to have a slightly different perspective, but still a young kid.

I came home after we got the word we were going in and looked at my son and hoped things would be cleared up by the time he was 18.

Now all of my parents’ grandsons but one have signed up for selective service and none of them think of Vietnam as the war of their father’s generation or WWII and Korea as their grandparents.

Iraq and Afghanistan play a role and they know about 9/11 but not from an adult perspective.

We keep our fingers crossed that by the time they are parents too this sort of thought won’t be something they think about in the same manner, though I am skeptical.

I don’t walk around in fear or worried about every bad thing that could happen. Don’t worry about gun violence or terrorism impacting my day though I know it is possible.

Nah, I am more concerned with stupid crap like falling down the stairs, tripping on a curb or traffic accidents. Statistically those are more likely and I don’t actively worry about any of them.

But I do get irritated sometimes at having to go to the doc and sometimes I remind myself the privilege of 9/11 is the reminder that we’re still here and still able to have experiences, both good and bad.

That is a gift.