The Madness of Wild Bill

Every journey begins with a single step, but this morning it began with the touch of a button. All I’ve been reading about for months is the need for us to take ten thousand steps each day in order to keep the old bod functioning properly. As I’ve been tearing calendar pages for longer than I care to remember and, feeling quite chipper, thank you very much, since I find that task quite pleasant, I decided to live forever and take my first ten thousand steps per day starting on rising this morning.

To digress, I have been into cardio vascular exercise for many years, so this is not quite as outrageous as it sounds. I took up jogging and later running when in my late forties and backed down to purposeful walking when I passed sixty. The task was twofold: to be able to walk the full eighteen holes of my once a week spoiled walk at the local golf course and to maintain what remained of my CV fitness level. They say that walking a round of golf amounts to about six miles. In my case, that’s quite conservative as `spraying the ball about’ is a kind way to describe my game. So I had little doubt that on Mondays making 10K steps was assured.

Most other days of the week I walk with purpose through my neighborhood for some two and a half to three and a half miles and was content with the effort. But no, the health mavens never let it go at that; it’s no longer thirty (or, later, forty) minutes of strong steady walking to assure the bankruptcy of the Social Security Trust Fund, it’s ten thousand steps.

What’s a senile old man to do? Why head for Radio Shack and buy an electronic pedometer, that’s what. Of course, I spent three hours completely glued to my seat reading the instructions and must have missed three or four thousand opportunities to degrade my hips and knees and add to my CV fitness. Notwithstanding the difficulties associated with comprehending instructions originally written in Chinese and translated into English in a galaxy far, far away, I was ready to embark on my journey at the point of dawn.

On arising, I quickly concluded that I had already shorted myself by maybe fifty steps taken between bed, bath and beyond before successfully attaching the horrible little appendage to my belt. Ten thousand steps would be easily achieved but I’d have to be alert to the need to add steps for such obvious errors against my total.

But on the way to my first cup of coffee, I made a horrible discovery. On moving between cupboard, refrigerator, stove, and breakfast table, I was getting credit for all kinds of mini steps. Reach for napkin – one step; back to the right for sugar, another. Surely the mavens don’t mean the 10 thousand pity pats which are adding up so quickly before I even injected my first cc of caffeine or read the headlines?

Naturally, I’m in crisis, and a deep angst has settled about the house. Really, I should have gotten credit for about fifty steps before the official count began. But what about the couple of hundred I was granted for hardly stepping at all while reaching for the margarine and sugar?

I won’t tell what I paid for the device that is already giving me chest pains – or for the one I bought the wife since she too seems intent on super longevity. By the way, within minutes of arriving in the kitchen, she was howling about the inaccuracy of her new medical marvel. This, of course, has doubled my need for nitroglycerin under the tongue.

I’ve decided to add a hundred steps for various omissions and to subtract a thousand for pity pat steps and for unmentionable bathroom activities. But at the end of the day, I fully expect to be able a certify to those in the public health sector carefully watching over me that I made my ten thousand steps and that I need my angina medicine prescription renewed.

Are you sure that you’re taking ten thousand steps each day? I see no alternative to purchasing a pedometer to be sure. Oh, and pick one up for the spouse while you’re at it.

Blog on!

Wild Bill