Were the good old days really any good? Are the memories of past accomplishments reliable, or are they slightly skewed by thirty years of ensuing failure?
As I get older, I frequently catch myself thinking about things I used to do when I was younger. I wonder why I stopped hiking through the wilderness for days with nothing but the items I could cram into a backpack. I think about playing high school football and little league baseball. I remember jumping into a car on the weekends with my buddies and driving to Santa Cruz to hit the boardwalk and lounge on the beach. And I ask myself, why don’t I do those things anymore?
Then I injure my back carrying the garbage out to the curb and the answers all come rushing back to me.
I’m not a kid anymore.
In college, I used to be able to drink and party all night, and still make it to class at 7 AM the next morning. Now, if I have two glasses of wine in the same evening, I pass out on the couch and wake up the next morning feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck.
When I was first working as a police officer many years ago, I loved to work the night shift. I worked all night, slept for a few hours in the morning and was back up by noon to go to the gym. These days, if I’m awake past ten o’clock at night I congratulate myself for managing to stay awake so late and promise to reward myself with a three-hour nap the next afternoon.
Times have changed and so have I. But it’s more than just realizing all the things I used to be able to accomplish that I don’t anymore. I also find myself wondering how many of my memories are just over-exaggerated recollections of what truly happened. Or maybe even recollections of things that never actually occurred.
We have all listened to other people inflate the truth a bit. We’ve listened to stories over the years that get bigger and more exciting with every telling. That diving catch for a three-yard gain on the high school football field becomes the winning touchdown for the State Championship. A two-pound bass you caught as a teenager, over time and multiple tellings, grows to the mighty leviathan that dragged you and the boat around a lake for five hours before you were able to finally land it.
I have begun to wonder how many of my remembered accomplishments were slightly less spectacular than I recall them to be.
I used to be a pretty good dancer. At least, that’s what I tell myself these days when I’m out on the dance floor with my feet rooted in place and I’m swinging my arms at something roughly resembling the tempo of the music. However, I have a growing suspicion that my go-to move these days is probably the exact same epileptic flailing I was busting out in the clubs when I was in my twenties. The only difference is, the haze of my memories is telling me I was John Travolta, when I should be remembering Daffy Duck.
I also used to study and teach martial arts. I remember being pretty good at that, too. But lately, as I break into a sweat just trying to bend over and tie my shoes, I began to doubt my own recollections of what I used to be able to accomplish.
I remember being in my forties and still being able to spar and hold my own with black belts in their twenties. Of course, I also remember one of those twenty-something year old kids cracking a couple of my ribs when he landed a punch I wasn’t prepared for. So, that’s kind of a mixed message for me.
Was I any good, or was I just a punching bag?
Maybe the truth is a little of both.
Recently, a friend of mine sent me a picture he took while we were practicing in our Dojo fifteen years ago. It shows me three feet off the ground about to kick a focus pad. (Believe it or not, that’s me in the photo above.) This picture was taken back when I could still get myself in the air without a ladder and three friends preventing me from falling off. But, more importantly, it actually shows me doing something that I tell people I used to be able to do.
So, if this was true, if I used to be able to jump in the air and kick something over my head, what else am I remembering correctly? Maybe my memory isn’t so foggy after all.
Maybe I actually am John Travolta, and perhaps I did catch the winning touchdown at a State championship game.
Maybe.
I mean, probably not.
But, maybe.
.
.
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