While 35 isn’t an old age by any means (in fact, if you’re a bloated outfielder in San Francisco, this was about the time your body started expanding “naturally” and getting stronger), there are times when you realize how much easier it is to pick up aches and pains doing the dumbest or moist inane things.  Much like how baseball players seem to get the oddest injuries (Sammy Sosa throwing out his back while sneezing comes to mind), I now have been encountering muscle strains in the oddest ways.

Last month I stepped on one of my daughter’s toys, which every parent knows is a hazard that is unavoidable at times.  I’ve been able to keep this to a minimum but this particular time it really hurt the bottom of my foot.  That pain went away after a few minutes but later that evening, my knee hurt like hell and I realized I must have inadvertently wrenched that knee countering my balance when I tried not to fall.  That strained muscle lasted several days.

This week’s incident takes the cake though.  We’ve all done odd things in our sleep but that usually is limited to sleeping on your arm and having it feel dead when you wake up.  Sometimes, if I’m on my back, the pressure points in my elbows stop the flow of blood and I’ll wake up with 2 gimpy arms that I’m convinced are now so drained of blood they’ll never recover in a way that I can use them again.  It’s an odd feeling to not be able to feel your fingers in one hand not feel the other hand’s fingers and vice versa when both arms have no blood in them.  I’m always convinced in my sleep-induced haze that this time I have caused irreparable damage and will have to use one of those wheelchairs where you blow into a tube to navigate around.

Anyway, that’s not what happened.  I woke up about 3 AM and fell back asleep.  I specifically remember that the dream I had at the time was about me playing softball.  When my daughter woke me up at 5:30, I went to tuck her back into bed and as I was trying to get out of bed I felt this terrible pulled muscle pain below my right knee.  I could barely walk to her bed to put her back to sleep and trying to lift my leg back into my bed was almost an impossible task.  I wondered to myself “What the fuck did I do to myself in the middle of the goddamn night?” 

There are only two scenarios I can think which caused this.  One theory is that, in the middle of me playing REM Ball, my leg jerked out with such force that it strained the muscles around my knee.  My other conjecture is that my leg held my knee in an extended position for a long time while sleeping and the muscle became fatigued and/or overextended.  Regardless of what it was, all I know is that it flippin’ hurt for that day.

Look – I can accept “old man” injuries such as hurting yourself doing chores around the house, maybe hyper-extending something while playing with your kids, possibly breaking or ripping something while playing sports, or even suffering mortal wounds in your secondary job as a crimefighting superhero at night.  But I can’t help but say “Tsk tsk” to my body that is injuring me WHILE I SLEEP.  Those are not acceptable injuries and I have put my body on Probation for pulling a prank on me like that.