Another visit to the lung specialist this morning. I haven’t had a hit of the good stuff for at least six months now.
By good stuff I mean my inhalers, the ones that keep sick people from dropping dead, and to which I pretty much assumed I would be taking for the rest of my life, like some kind of junkie who never gets high, but still has to spend a lot of money on pills and various drug paraphernalia—asthmatics have bongs, too, they’re just not any fun—until my lungs finally turn into the shriveled little raisins I sometimes imagine them to be. So this is all good news, especially compared to the other patients in the office, who actually seem sick. I’m enjoying the good health.
In class tonight, we’re learning how to break someone’s arm, when my partner screams out in pain and lies down on the mat with a cramped abdominal muscle. Even with the air conditioner running, it’s about ninety degrees inside the gym, and the sweat is pouring off of him as if it were blood pouring from a gash in his forehead. Anyhow, drink your water kids. Imagine having a charley horse in your stomach.
I’ve also been working on using my belt to tie my gi up into a little bundle. All the cool kids are doing it. One of the guys from class says, as we’re leaving, “Hey, man, you look like David Carradine.” I’ll admit, it felt good.
