MEMO to self: You're an aged human being. You'll never see 50 again. Life has passed you by.
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Face facts. You are too old to play touch football.
For whatever reason call it a late life crisis if you will the Monday of last week saw this correspondent make a comeback to touch footy.
We'd enjoyed a six-month hiatus from the sport, caused at first through winter chill then complete indifference to wanting to play again. Six relatively idyllic months they were as well. Life was good.
Now, let us explain that we're not talking about a particularly high standard of touch footy here. It's about as far removed from the State Cup as the Abbott government is to strong governance.
It's a mob of geriatrics stumbling around and falling over on the Jack Neal Oval on a Monday afternoon. The vast majority of us are just working up a thirst, happy to get through the hour or so of torture without sustaining a serious injury or worse.
So this correspondent didn't really miss this weekly sweat. And from the reception we received last week, we weren't particularly missed, either.
"Whathisname's back,'' puffed one as we sauntered onto the field.
"At least I won't be the worst player here today,'' whispered another.
And it was obvious that nothing much had changed in our absence. Passes were still dropped. Play tendered to meander along without any rhyme nor reason. Touches were missed, players complained about the referee, the standard of refereeing was about as consistent as we remembered from our last match.
And it was hot. Way too hot.
We spent the majority of the 'game' standing on the wing and generally staying out of trouble.
Such was our lack of effort that the only serious injury we really risked was severe sunburn.
Or so we thought. For that was Monday afternoon.
That led to Monday evening and of course a trip to the hotel for re-hydration (okay, we know, alcohol dehydrates, but don't go getting all medical on us here).
Unfortunately that in turn led to Tuesday morning. We work up, which admittedly was a positive start. Then we attempted to move and that's where things went pear shaped.
As Dr Smith from Lost in Space once lamented: "Oh the pain... the pain.''
The next 48 hours proved to be a pitiful struggle. We battled a bad back, crippled hamstrings, aching joints and even a sore jaw, which was possibly caused from talking too much on Monday night.
We kept going in silence, mainly because we had no-one to complain to and even if we did we'd be surprised if we received any sympathy. And really, we didn't deserve any, for no-one pushed us into playing.
This piece was scribbled before last Monday's game, so we don't know if we made it there or not, but we'd like to think we didn't. For we spent the weekend in contemplation and still a bit of pain.
"Too old for touch footy,'' we mumbled more than once.
So we might hang up our boots for the very last time and save us a lot of grief.
Perhaps we should concentrate on bowls instead and act our age.
Old age. It really has nothing going for it.