Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Intimations of Mortality.

Just as the weather is beginning to warm in New York, and just as baseball's Spring Training is about to groove into full-swing, I have re-injured my right rotator cuff.

After decades of playing ball, I was always all-but-impervious to arm injuries, but almost two years ago to the day I suffered what orthopaedists call a FOOSH--a fall on out-stretched hand and I painfully wrenched my shoulder.

For six months--while I was day-rating my way through life as a freelancer-- I refused to go to a shoulder doctor. And then, somehow, maybe magically, the pain disappeared and the strength in my right arm returned. As I chronicled in previous posts, I was even able to make the long throw from third to first and throw out a runner in my first Juego de Viejos, my first Old Timers Game in Saltillo, Mexico last May.

Recently, however, my arm and shoulder pain has returned, like the once-beaten Red Army with a vengeance. The truth is it brings me a wince a good two dozen times a day, and I have a hard time doing simple things like opening my sock drawer or even sleeping.

I am slated to see the orthopaedist two weeks from today and from there we'll see if they'll just decide to lop the thing off, send me to physical therapy or perform some kind of remedial surgery.

Last night, laying painfully in bed I dreamt that I had surgery and returned to work with my arm in a sling. I woke up from this nightmare fairly scared out of my remaining wits. How would I type?

The truth is, I use about four fingers now, and if you halved that, well, my famed lucidity would be highly questionable. How would I churn out this blog, not to mention the reams of copy I seem to populate on an almost hourly basis.

My fear, of course, is that the world needs a one-arm copywriter about as much as it needs a one-legged pole-vaulter. Perhaps my boss, finding a well-secreted streak of kindness would find me a job down in the cafeteria; I could restock the salad bar, or some such.

Things got better after I found the meme above.

No one should really worry about copywriters. Me included.

After all, this shit writes itself.

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