Watching Philip Rivers Play Makes Me Feel Old

Several years back, I began marking my birthday with an extra-long run, in order to show my defiance of the degenerations of middle age. But last week, when I turned forty-four, I catalogued my various infirmities instead. There was my fraying right iliotibial band, which had never quite healed after an overuse injury ten years ago. I located a mysterious pressure in my right hip, no doubt related to the IT band, or to the weak glute attached to it. A few weeks ago, while sitting on my heels playing with my toddler, I felt an acute pain behind my left knee. The sensation quickly passed, but the knee, which had never given me trouble, now felt a little balky, and I could mentally trace the path of my left hamstring—a muscle that, until then, had been entirely theoretical, no more real to me than a squid’s brain or a hummingbird’s tongue. (If wisdom comes with aging, it is surely in matters of anatomy.)