When my legs swing over the side of the bed in the morning and touch down on the floor, my left knee buckles. Not a lot. Just a little.

That’s interesting.

In my head I always think, “That’s interesting,” when I really mean, “What the fuck?”

I wonder for a moment if 20 year old me would have felt that slight “give” of the knee.

In the shower, I feel a springy pain in my left arm near the elbow. When I rub it to work the pain out, I learn the pain was not where I thought, but in an entirely different place. Apparently springy pains can move around.

Later in the car, I look to my right only to discover that I have a pain near my jaw but kind of in my neck. As I stretch to loosen up, the pain dances around then vanishes. I decide to name the offending area the “jeck” because it is neither definitively the jaw nor conclusively the neck.

So it goes when you hit 42. Every day there is an interesting new pain in a body part I didn’t know I had for the prior four decades.

Each pain initiates a new negotiation. Get on the treadmill. Eat healthier. Less of this. More of that. The negotiation usually ends with me deferring the negotiation to the next day. I’ve started piling up deferrals since the age of 30. The paperwork will likely keep me from getting on the treadmill until I hit 60.

By the time bedtime comes around, I remind myself to take my TUMS so I can sleep past the heartburn.

Tomorrow, I promise myself, I’ll get on the treadmill.

I swear.