Ouch.

It's funny how when you're old, little things can remind you of who you've always been.

For about a year now, I've been struggling through a painful right hip. About six months ago, it started getting wincing bad. About a month ago, I started seriously thinking about seeing a doctor about the prospect of a hip replacement. (Not a hip-replacement. A hip replacement.)

Last week, amid what was one of the busiest work weeks of my life, I decided I needed some time away from the Gingham Coast and took the Amtrak train back to the city. The last time I did so, I took a cab up to my apartment from Penn Station. It took about an hour and it cost me about $70. It's a four-mile trip.

My wife let me forget neither of those facts. "You have your Metrocard," she asked-and-answered. "Take the Q from 6th and 34th, and you'll be at 83rd and 2nd in two shakes of a rat's tail."

Obediently, and against my snobbish better judgment, I agreed. I'd take the egalitarian train. Not an elitist cab.

 

What I didn't calculate was that in compensating for the not inconsiderable pain in my right hip, I successfully threw my back out. I limped through ever-crowded Herald Square lugging my overnight bag and walking like the worst of the guys above. Shot through with buckshot. Barefoot. And pained from god-knows-what, and probably Dysentery.

But, as they say, "Dig We Must."

In long short-order I made it back to my apartment, sweating and cursing with the unseasonable 80-degree late-October climate-change-denial heat.

Unfortunately, a raft of repair people were in my New York apartment when I arrived. Repair for the apartment. Not for me. And I hastened them along. Just an hour after I got into my apartment, I had a client call--and I didn't want to wrassle the toilet repairman while I was reconnoitering my way through a host of confusing and conflicting client comments.

When the call ended I was what our British friends call, "knackered." I sat, finally, in my favorite chair, drew myself a tall-cold glass of seltzer water and ordered some Chinese food. I hoped to not be disturbed for the rest of the evening.

That was not to be. 

There were noisy Halloweeners in the hallways. My wife and children called, and I remembered I had scheduled a client call for Friday and I hadn't read what I needed to read. What's more, my longest-serving client had called that morning. He too had something pressing.

There's something about people of my generation. Or maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's having grown up poor.

We have a hard time stopping.

We have a hard time saying no. 

Even then we know better, we haven't learned to no better.

Even when age peers say, "George, when are you going to cash in some of the chips you've accumulated? When are you going to take a load off your feet?"

This morning, Saturday morning, against my better judgment and against my assorted pains, I went out for my morning walk.

I said to myself, "George, you don't have to do four miles. It's ok if you do two." But I did my full distance--and then tacked on an extra half-mile to get to the last newsstand in Manhattan that still sells the paper Wall Street Journal.

I remembered, as I was limping, my late twenties basketball days, when I would play until I bled against the kids in the local school yard. I'd open the door and immediately say to my wife, "don't be angry." 

An eye was blacked, a nose was Terry-Malloyed, or a knee was bloody.

That comes with the territory if you're playing ball in shark-infested waters. 

And when aren't you?

Mid-day Friday, I had one of the client calls I mentioned above. The client is pro-bono. But she runs a huge organization doing important work, helping hundreds of thousands of kids who need help. What's more, she was nice and smart and thankful. Agencies one-hundred times the size of GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company would give their left arms to have a pro-bono account like this. 

At the end of the call, the client said to me and H, my account director, "Thank you so much for all you're doing. I can't tell you how grateful we are."

I said to the client, "We're lucky. H and I like each other and we like working together. I like you and I believe in what you're doing and your cause. I'm glad I get to do all this."

If you want to, you can find plenty of reasons to phone it in. Or to half ass an entire day, or an assignment, or anything you choose. During the World Series, a Yankee pitcher who's signed a $300 million contract didn't run over and cover first on a simple play. Even if you make $300 million, no one pillories you for shit like that anymore.

Except I do.

Lassitude can cost you the World Series title. Like it cost the Yankees this year.

Lassitude can cost you more than a World Series title.

It can cost you your self respect, your pride, your soul.

Those are prices I'm not willing to pay.