Wednesday, June 04, 2008
For some people, turning 40 means stepping back, reflecting on your life, relaxing, taking time to stop and smell the roses.
Apparently, I didn’t get the memo. You can’t see it because mud dries lighter than it is when originally rolled in and the bruises haven’t begun to turn the colors of a tequila sunrise, but I had a rough day yesterday. Hell, I’ve had a rough month. Now, when I say rough, I don’t mean it in a bad way. I mean rough as in rugged.
In the last two weeks alone, I’ve learned how to swamp a canoe and rescue those who’ve been swamped; camped for a weekend, thrown 20 girls down a zipline in the forrest; fired a black powder musket and yesterday I ran an obstacle course that would’ve made a Marine proud.
When Leslie turns 40, she apparently means cram all the activity she hasn’t done in 40 years into one month. Some people buy a Mustang convertible for their mid-life crisis. Apparently, I try to kill myself.
Still, if offers me some perspective. Yesterday was Ropes Course training day at Girl Scout camp and I managed to clear an 8ft. high wall, make it through a tire suspended 3 feet over the ground without touching said tire, swung on a rope across an imaginary canyon, tightrope-walk a thin metal cable in hiking boots – all done in the rain and mud.
And I couldn’t be prouder.
This may be because my alfredo-clogged arteries didn’t rise up and smite me with a heart attack, or because when I was 20 I didn’t even do these things.
Someone told me last weekend that in a family, if the mother is into outdoors activities, the girls are 80% likely to love the outdoors as well. But if only the father is an outdoorsman, girls in the family are only 20% likely to be active outdoors. In my family, both parents thought “roughing it” was staying at a hotel with an outdoor pool. So, I didn’t do stuff like that.
Obviously, this is my mid-life rebellion. And I couldn’t be happier. I look at it as a sort of sadistic spa treatment. After all, the work-out is like a hardcore Swedish massage and all that mud is probably good for my skin. Right?
In retrospect, I probably should’ve paced myself. Doing all of the above in less than a month is pretty exhausting. On the other hand, by some miracle worthy of any religion, I survived. Surely that’s worth something. Isn’t it?