I always dread the arrival of the monthly AARP magazine. My wife picks through it and confronts me with ways we should amend our current financial and medical approaches to life in our senior years…
“Listen to this, Dick: men over 50 — that’s you since 1997 – who eat fish just once a month are 30 percent less likely to have a heart attack and will live 10 years longer.”
“Wow, now that is amazing! So, what’s for dinner?”
“Turkey burgers. I don’t want to stink up the house. And consider this: chocolate is actually good for you. It says here that chocolate contains antioxidants and that it can prolong your life. But chocolate contains calories and fat that can cause obesity and heart disease. I guess it’s not all good news.”
“Yes, Mary Ellen, that’s why they call it bittersweet chocolate. By the way, I read yesterday in the AARP magazine that the best place to put your money is in a CD that pays 7 percent. Why don’t we do that?”
“Because you read that at the dentist’s office in a 25-year-old magazine, that’s why.”
This month’s issue had a section where people asked questions that concerned them: How do I know if I am eating too much salt? Is it normal to wake up grumpy? Is whole milk okay? And my favorite: Will watching cable news give me a heart attack? The answer was, “It depends.” I guess it depends on which station you watch. I’ll leave it there.
The answer to one question caused some distress in our house. The reader was concerned that after she climbed stairs, she was out of breath. “Is this a symptom of heart disease?” she wondered. The answer given was that she was probably just out of shape, but then the article’s author offered this: “Here’s a better test. Can you sit on the ground and get up without using your hands? An inability to do this is correlated with a shortened life span.”
“We have to try this,” said Mary Ellen. “Let’s go in the bedroom.” This sounded a lot better than it turned out to be. We both got down on the rug in a sitting position, which for me was already way harder than I remembered. We squirmed, rolled around on the floor, grunted, banged into each other, and started laughing (which is good for your heart, so we accomplished something).
“I’m sorry, Mary Ellen, but there’s no way I can get off the ground without using my hands. It’s impossible.”
“I saw it in a movie once. This guy sat on his carpet and did it easily.”
“You were watching Arabian Nights.”
I looked up the maneuver on YouTube and there were lots of videos of people doing this very exercise. What really unnerved me is that there is a 10-point scale to achieve this goal and you lose points for using otherparts of your body to help you stand up. Loss of four points means your chances of living the next five years are reduced. The next time Mary Ellen and I tried the move, I only lost one point. To get to a standing position, I didn’t require my forearms, my elbows, or my hands.
I required my wife.
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