A Letter To My Body As I Age

Thank you for everything you’ve done for me over the years but now is not the time to start faltering

Image credit: Freepik

Dear Body,

First of all I want to say how much I’ve appreciated your efforts over the years we’ve been together. You didn’t have an easy start, what with all that parental smoking and drinking and the frequent shortages of food. Considering neither of my parents had the slightest idea of how to deal with our accidental arrival in their lives, you’ve done magnificently. I wish I’d been there for you back then, with all my accumulated knowledge and hard-won understanding: I’d certainly have taken you to a dentist long before the age of eighteen, not to mention also buying a much wider range of nutrients.

Back then, however, we were young and we were entirely dependent on bigger people who unfortunately seemed determined to spend all of their time intoxicated out of their minds while simultaneously smoking at least six cigarettes each. And those horn-rimmed spectacles! Whoever invented that particular fashion crime should have been knocked senseless with an IgNoble Prize cast in solid bronze.

But here we are today, decades later. Thankfully you’ve always been an out-of-doors sort of Body and by the time we discovered television at age twelve it was too…