Head Up 3/29/10

I have been trying to improve my posture lately. I am a renown sloucher of long, crooked standing. My Fair Mother noticed my slanted stance when I was quite young, and sought to straighten me out. Her remedies included making me stand upright with shoulders back. Since I have never had any shoulders, this tactic was doomed to fail. Another method was ye olde Books on the Noggin While Reciting Inane Rhymes, made popular in a movie of the same name, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. The line about Spain, rain, and the plain, clashed with my musical references of the time, "I've never been to Spain, but I kind of like the people," by Three Dog Night, which confounded my mushy melon, causing me to lose focus, lean forward, and tumble the tomes onto the carpet.

Though her efforts failed back then, the importance of good posture on lung capacity and core strength were not lost on me-I have just not been able to implement it. Even now, I continue to try to straighten up and run right. During my last few runs, I have tried to concentrate on keeping my head up, and my back straight. I hope that by doing so, I will run more efficiently, reduce discomfort in my joints, and lose my Quasimodo hump.

I did pretty well on today's six-miler, never fixating too long on my moving feet. Whenever I did glance straight down, the post-it notes I'd stuck on my shoe tops admonishing me that "You are about to fall into a bottomless pit! Look up, Stoop-id!," frightened me back into proper form, with an effectiveness that Rex Harrison and my mother never would have imagined.

It was fascinating, too, all the things I noticed while I was running more like Homo Erectus, rather than Homo Slumpticus. Things like birds nests in tree tops, cars backing out of driveways, jet contrails in the clear, morning sky, and flying monkeys waiting to swoop down on plucky Cairn terriers.

I'm not going to be able to snap out of my tilted perspective in a week, I know. It took forty-six years to get where I am, so bringing me back to vertical might take just as long. Maybe the ninety-two year-old me will stand out, and stand tall in the crowd at the Retirement Corral, because of his perfect posture, when all his peers will be hunched over and shrunken. If I could just get close to straight, though, I'd be happy. If not the Washington Monument, then the Tower of Pisa. It's been standing longer, after all. Maybe it is better to be just a little bent.

Thanks for reading.