Stand By Legs

     My title is not stating the obvious, that we stand by using our legs. Although that fits with the kind of public service announcements that are now considered news--Drink water when the weather is hot. Dress warmer when it is cold. Things some of us figured out decades ago without media input. This post is about the strange phenomenon that happens as we age. Today was a long travel day for us, by long I mean over eight hours. When we were young, we frequently made 13 hour trips from Salem, Oregon to Missoula, Montana over a weekend. We did not consider the drives long. Our legs seemed to share that opinion because, when we got out of the car, they knew exactly what to do--stand up, walk. In vehicle terms, our bodies had automatic transmissions, they anticipated what was coming (stand, walk) and shifted gears without any conscious effort on our part. In computer terminology, while we rode in the car for hours, our legs remained in stand by mode. When the car stopped, that jiggled the mouse of our mental computers and our legs booted right up. 

    Gradually, our transmissions shifted. Not into Neutral. Into Park. And morphed into manual. After a much shorter day of travel, when we stopped to get out of the car, our legs did not shift positions automatically, it took some time for the signal from our brain to reach our legs. In computer terms, during the hours on the road, our legs are no longer on stand by, they are completely powered off. In my case, my colon also puts on its parking brake during road trips, but that is a situation I will spare you here. Let's stick with legs that work like sticks. 

    Now when we get out of the car, until our legs reboot, we walk into the gas station, restaurant, or hotel stiff legged, like Frankenstein's grandparents. The older we get, the longer the restart seems to take. No amount of wiggling our legs while we are still in the car will trigger the reboot. I am not, like so many in my culture, anti-aging. Growing older is not only a natural process, it is a blessing from God. But I do miss having legs that stay in stand by mode when I am not using them, and if I wasn't such a sweet old lady, I wouldn't stand for it.