Becoming Shaggy

No, the title does not refer to the fact that my hair is getting longer or that I need to shave (that is never news). In fact, it refers to the infamous Scooby Doo character.

My wife pointed out yesterday, after seeing me stroll across a room, that I look like Shaggy when I stand or walk. Hunched over, lazily sauntering.

It occurs to me that my posture has drastically deteriorated since last summer. Early in the season, Heather and I went out with my brother-in-law and his wife and another couple from the gym. We took a ride on this couple's boat in Lake Grapevine. After a fun-filled, albeit chilly, day, we came back to the dock. Mike jumped out to tie up the boat and Leah was assisting him from inside the vessel. As he was tying off the line, the boat began to drift and Mike's legs began to spread apart in the splits. Knowing how uncomfortable this is for any man (other than Jean Claude Van Dam) I jumped out of my seat and went to his rescue. Standing on the edge of the boat, I surveyed the ever-widening distance between the boat and the dock, glanced back and forth nervously several times, and then leapt. I did not count on the force of my jump propelling the boat further away from the dock, and what would have been a successful jump from stable footing became a watery crash. I splashed into the water with my legs, and into the dock with my sternum. There was much thrashing around to climb out, quite a few scrapes on my chest from the rough wood, and a pain in my rib cage that would linger for weeks and months to come. To top it off, Mike calmly said to me, "Jay, we could have just pulled around and tried again."

For the remainder of the summer, it hurt to stand straight up or breath in deeply. Did I crack a bone in my chest? I will never know, because, being uninsured, I never had it checked out. Being hunched over during my healing period turned into being hunched over permanentaly, apparently.

So now I look like a cartoon character. At least I know what I'll be for Halloween.