Over the Hill?

It occurred to me somewhere between not being able to move the day after a vigorous yoga class and not being able to find my passport that I’m getting old.\nI know, it’s shocking. I mean, if 50 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30, well, then 21 should be the new 11, right? Let me assure you my friends, this is simply not the case.\nI turned 21 two weeks ago, and while I’ve survived the stereotypical pitfalls of that birthday, I wasn’t expecting the other curveballs an aging body would throw at me.\nFirst, as I mentioned before, was the yoga incident. Looking back, I should have known the inverted star would do me in, but I’m still new to this whole yoga thing and I really have no one to blame but myself. See, I believe in a little-known sect of yoga called “Xtreme Yoga!” Note the clever spelling and necessary exclamation point.\nYou see, calmness and finding one’s center are great, but man, I’m in yoga for the thrills. Think mountain biking meets meditation. Sure, Xtreme Yoga! isn’t really “safe” or “recommended,” but when has that stopped me before?\nAnyway, much to my surprise, I woke up the day after one of my sessions with some intense lower-back pain. How intense, you ask? Well, you know how your grandparents moan a bit and hold their lower backs while standing up or sitting down? Yeah, that was me.\nOn top of this, I discovered two weeks before I’m supposed to go to Paris for spring break that I couldn’t find my passport. I knew I had seen it recently, so I hadn’t completely lost it (well, hadn’t completely lost the passport, that is), but I just couldn’t place it.\nI remembered that I had hidden it inside a book cover so no one would be able to find it. And let me tell you, I did a pretty bang-up job. I looked in every book in my room multiple times (which, being an English major, was quite a feat) and still found no sign of it. After days and days of frantic searching, I finally plopped down on my couch and let out a huge sigh.\nJust then, I noticed a notebook on the counter. I opened it up and sure enough, there was my dumb passport picture beaming back at me, as if to say “Ha! Got you! I was here all along!”\nI hate it when my passport gives me sass. \nAnyway, I still had a third important lesson to learn about being 21, and this one is more what you would expect. After going home to have a few beers with my dad, a friend and his dad, I made it back home feeling a little sick to my stomach.\nThe problem wasn’t that I had a little too much beer that evening. No, one too many plates of fried pickles did me in. \nSigh. Even my digestive tract is getting old.