Getting in touch

I’ve hurt my shoulders a lot. It comes from doing things like playing hockey (fracture, torn rotator cuff), football with friends (dislocated clavicle), bike accident (torn rotator cuff on the other side). Well, needless to say, I haven’t spent much time working on my dunking skills since high school.

See, when I was a teenager (yes, it was a while ago) I used to go around seeing what things I could reach just by jumping. I had a pretty good vertical leap (not great, not even average for an athlete, despite being an athlete), and I always tested myself. I could easily jump and hit the ceiling of my house, most of the school classrooms, signs, expensive doorjambs, you name it.

Enter college, a decade and more than fifty pounds, and let’s just say I haven’t been jumping to test my vertical leap that much. In fact, I’d kind of just written off that whole aspect of my life. No, I’m not sedentary, but both my mother and my sister gave up their sport of choice in their mid thirties, so I’ve been starting to feel, well, old.

Put out to pasture, even.

I know it’s silly, and that attitudes change (yeah, my 60 year old mom now goes to dance conventions where they dance from 10 am to 2 am for three days straight, so clearly her throwing in the towel for soccer might have been a touch premature).

Still I’ve been feeling a little wore out and over the hill (I’m not, I’m just feeling that way, and if you are too, you might like this video).

So there I am doing a work out, trying to pump myself up to get it done, when in comes my crazy curiosity. Can I touch the ceiling in here?

The ceiling in that room is a decent jump, and I didn’t really think I could. I mean, yeah, in high school I could have touched that ceiling, but I ain’t exactly in high school anymore, if you know what I mean. I lined it up and took a leap.

I missed.

I did it again.

I missed again.

I’m pretty stubborn, and that ceiling was pretty close, so I jumped again.

And I missed again.

I don’t know where I’d gotten it in my mind that touching the ceiling was some sort of bench mark for old. If I could touch it then I was awesome, but if that ceiling remained out of reach, then I was doomed to grow old and die unsatisfied.

I know it was dumb, but that stupid ceiling now had something I wanted back. Some part of my life that I’d let slip by somehow, and that damned ceiling had it. Wisdom, grace, youth—I don’t know, I just knew that it had it.

I stepped back and thought about how I used to jump, how I used to move with freedom.

Then I jumped and touched the ceiling.

Complete euphoria. I might as well have won a gold medal with that leap. I fist pumped and everything (cause I am a nerd). I may have even hollered out my victory roar. In my mind I heard the 80s music as the credits roll.

Yeah, I know it’s silly, but it was such an incredible feeling.

Ever have that moment of complete euphoria? (though I suspect mine’s the only one for touching a silly ceiling).