In My Mind, I'm Still Twenty-five

In my mind, I'm still twenty-five. In reality, I'm not. How old am I? Well, a lady never tells, but let's just say that twenty-five is pretty far back in the rearview mirror. Anyway, with the exception of those times when I spend hours searching for my car keys only to find they have been inexplicably placed in the refrigerator, I feel as fit and alert as I did back then. In fact, that attitude hasn't changed in years (and people much older than me have expressed similar sentiments), so I have no reason to think I'll ever "feel my age" - mentally anyway.

This should be a good thing, right? I mean, who doesn't smile at the thought that when they're forty, fifty or even seventy, they'll still feel capable of living a full life, doing everything they used to. I suppose that's true, but ... (there's always a but, isn't there?) the problem comes when you fail to acknowledge that this "I can do anything I used to" feeling is all in your head.

Just yesterday, I saw a television commercial advertising an upcoming ice dancing show. The ad showed a skater doing a beautiful split as she leapt gracefully through the air. (Are you starting to see the problem here?) Naturally, I immediately pictured myself performing such a move right there in my living room. And so I did. Now, the real flaw in my thinking here was the thought that I was ever capable of performing such a move. I mean, sure, I went skating when I was a kid. I even managed to remain upright through most of it. However, I can think of no instance when both of my feet left the surface of the rink that wasn't the result of an unfortunate meeting of my backside and the ice. Also, the whole leaping thing aside, I cannot recall ever having been able to (intentionally) do a split.

This incident is only slightly reminiscent of my last cartwheel attempt only three years ago - which was successful by the way - but then, I was actually able to do cartwheels when I was younger. The only reason I did it recently was to make sure that the supposedly healed elbow I had broken was in fact still capable of holding me up in an inverted position. Now, why I needed to know that remains a mystery and the possible outcome if it had failed (that is, landing on my head) was potentially dangerous - so much so that my current older self spent a bit of time chastising that stupid but-I'm-still-twenty-five mindset of mine.

Other notable stupid things I've done in the name of independence and a can-do attitude include attempting to remove old kitchen cabinets by myself (those are much heavier when they land on your foot than you think they'll be), doing yoga in an un-airconditioned house after mowing the lawn on a 100 degree plus day (why is that floor moving up so fast?) and - this one happened when I was still young - attempting a high kick while wearing the tight jeans of a skinny young woman (let's just say that the stitching of said tight jeans did not allow for such a separation of the legs and be thankful that I was in front of a soft bed to fall on).

As for yesterday, I'm pleased to report that my ill-advised leap did not result in any lasting injury, nor were there any cameras around, so I won't end up on YouTube. However, the mere attempt introduced me to muscles I don't recall having - and they weren't happy. I'm now trying to convince my silly mind that there are perhaps things I should no longer try, no matter how cool they look when I picture myself doing them.

PS - I may finally be learning because shortly after the leaping incident, The Ellen Show had Madonna and her dancers on and I managed to refrain from attempting to do any of the moves they performed! Of course, that might have been due to the still sore muscles in my legs. Today will no doubt find me once again trying to play Dance Central (I still can't figure out why my Kinect doesn't recognize when I am flipping it off!).